On Tue, Feb 23, 2021 at 9:19 AM Joao Martins <joao.m.martins@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> On 2/23/21 4:50 PM, Dan Williams wrote:
> > On Tue, Feb 23, 2021 at 7:46 AM Joao Martins <joao.m.martins@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >> On 2/22/21 8:37 PM, Dan Williams wrote:
> >>> On Mon, Feb 22, 2021 at 3:24 AM Joao Martins <joao.m.martins@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >>>> On 2/20/21 1:43 AM, Dan Williams wrote:
> >>>>> On Tue, Dec 8, 2020 at 9:59 PM John Hubbard <jhubbard@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >>>>>> On 12/8/20 9:28 AM, Joao Martins wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> >>> Don't get me wrong the
> >>> capability is still needed for filesystem-dax, but the distinction is
> >>> that vmemmap_populate_compound_pages() need never worry about an
> >>> altmap.
> >>>
> >> IMO there's not much added complexity strictly speaking about altmap. We still use the
> >> same vmemmap_{pmd,pte,pgd}_populate helpers which just pass an altmap. So whatever it is
> >> being maintained for fsdax or other altmap consumers (e.g. we seem to be working towards
> >> hotplug making use of it) we are using it in the exact same way.
> >>
> >> The complexity of the future vmemmap_populate_compound_pages() has more to do with reusing
> >> vmemmap blocks allocated in previous vmemmap pages, and preserving that across section
> >> onlining (for 1G pages).
> >
> > True, I'm less worried about the complexity as much as
> > opportunistically converting configurations to RAM backed pages. It's
> > already the case that poison handling is page mapping size aligned for
> > device-dax, and filesystem-dax needs to stick with non-compound-pages
> > for the foreseeable future.
> >
> Hmm, I was sort off wondering that fsdax could move to compound pages too as
> opposed to base pages, albeit not necessarily using the vmemmap page reuse
> as it splits pages IIUC.
I'm not sure compound pages for fsdax would work long term because
there's no infrastructure to reassemble compound pages after a split.
So if you fracture a block and then coalesce it back to a 2MB or 1GB
aligned block there's nothing to go fixup the compound page... unless
the filesystem wants to get into mm metadata fixups.
