Currently enabling THP support (CONFIG_TRANSPARENT_HUGEPAGE) requires enabling either CONFIG_TRANSPARENT_HUGEPAGE_ALWAYS or CONFIG_TRANSPARENT_HUGEPAGE_MADVISE, which both cause khugepaged starting by default at kernel bootup. Add the third choice CONFIG_TRANSPARENT_HUGEPAGE_NEVER, in line with the existing kernel command line setting transparent_hugepage=never, to disable THP by default (in particular, to prevent starting khugepaged by default) but still allow enabling it at runtime via sysfs. Rationale: khugepaged has its own non-negligible memory cost even if it is not used by any applications, since it bumps up vm.min_free_kbytes to its own required minimum in set_recommended_min_free_kbytes(). For example, on a machine with 4GB RAM, with 3 mm zones and pageblock_order == MAX_ORDER, starting khugepaged causes vm.min_free_kbytes increase from 8MB to 132MB. So if we use THP on machines with e.g. >=8GB of memory for better performance, but avoid using it on lower-memory machines to avoid its memory overhead, then for the same reason we also want to avoid even starting khugepaged on those <8GB machines. So with CONFIG_TRANSPARENT_HUGEPAGE_NEVER we can use the same kernel image on both >=8GB and <8GB machines, with THP support enabled but khugepaged not started by default. The userspace can then decide to enable THP via sysfs if needed, based on the total amount of memory. This could also be achieved with the existing transparent_hugepage=never setting in the kernel command line instead. But it seems cleaner to avoid tweaking the command line for such a basic setting. P.S. I see that CONFIG_TRANSPARENT_HUGEPAGE_NEVER was already proposed in the past [1] but without an explanation of the purpose. [1] https://lore.kernel.org/all/202211301651462590168@xxxxxxxxxx/ Signed-off-by: Dmytro Maluka <dmaluka@xxxxxxxxxxxx> Link: https://lore.kernel.org/all/20231204163254.2636289-1-dmaluka@xxxxxxxxxxxx/ --- v1 -> v2: Cosmetic documentation changes: - s/Disabling/Disable/ per Andrew - Clarified in the changelog that this adds a new choice "never" in addition to "always" and "madvise" --- mm/Kconfig | 6 ++++++ 1 file changed, 6 insertions(+) diff --git a/mm/Kconfig b/mm/Kconfig index 89971a894b60..1930e18be8a1 100644 --- a/mm/Kconfig +++ b/mm/Kconfig @@ -859,6 +859,12 @@ choice madvise(MADV_HUGEPAGE) but it won't risk to increase the memory footprint of applications without a guaranteed benefit. + + config TRANSPARENT_HUGEPAGE_NEVER + bool "never" + help + Disable Transparent Hugepage by default. It can still be + enabled at runtime via sysfs. endchoice config THP_SWAP -- 2.43.0.rc2.451.g8631bc7472-goog
