Skip to content

Commit

Permalink
Clear mem_path if we fall back to anonymous RAM allocation
Browse files Browse the repository at this point in the history
If the -mem-path option is set, we attempt to map the guest's RAM from a
file in the given path; it's usually used to back guest RAM with hugepages.
If we're unable to (e.g. not enough free hugepages) then we fall back to
allocating normal anonymous pages.  This behaviour can be surprising, but a
comment in allocate_system_memory_nonnuma() suggests it's legacy behaviour
we can't change.

What really isn't ok, though, is that in this case we leave mem_path set.
That means functions which attempt to determine the pagesize of main RAM
can erroneously think it is hugepage based on the requested path, even
though it's not.

This is particular bad for the pseries machine type.  KVM HV limitations
mean the guest can't use pagesizes larger than the host page size used to
back RAM.  That means that such a fallback, rather than merely giving
poorer performance than expected will cause the guest to freeze up early in
boot as it attempts to use large page mappings that can't work.

This patch addresses the problem by clearing the mem_path variable when we
fall back to anonymous pages, meaning that subsequent attempts to
determine the RAM page size will get an accurate result.

Signed-off-by: David Gibson <david@gibson.dropbear.id.au>
  • Loading branch information
dgibson committed Apr 27, 2018
1 parent 88f42c6 commit 6233b67
Showing 1 changed file with 1 addition and 0 deletions.
1 change: 1 addition & 0 deletions numa.c
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -469,6 +469,7 @@ static void allocate_system_memory_nonnuma(MemoryRegion *mr, Object *owner,
/* Legacy behavior: if allocation failed, fall back to
* regular RAM allocation.
*/
mem_path = NULL;
memory_region_init_ram_nomigrate(mr, owner, name, ram_size, &error_fatal);
}
#else
Expand Down

0 comments on commit 6233b67

Please sign in to comment.