Handling errors in memory hotunplug in the pSeries machine is more
complex than any other device type, because there are all the
complications that other devices has, and more.
For instance, determining a timeout for a DIMM hotunplug must consider
if it's a Hash-MMU or a Radix-MMU guest, because Hash guests takes
longer to hotunplug DIMMs. The size of the DIMM is also a factor, given
that longer DIMMs naturally takes longer to be hotunplugged from the
kernel. And there's also the guest memory usage to be considered: if
there's a process that is consuming memory that would be lost by the
DIMM unplug, the kernel will postpone the unplug process until the
process finishes, and then initiate the regular hotunplug process. The
first two considerations are manageable, but the last one is a deal
breaker.
There is no sane way for the pSeries machine to determine the memory
load in the guest when attempting a DIMM hotunplug - and even if there
was a way, the guest can start using all the RAM in the middle of the
unplug process and invalidate our previous assumptions - and in result
we can't even begin to calculate a timeout for the operation. This means
that we can't implement a viable timeout mechanism for memory unplug in
pSeries.
Going back to why we would consider an unplug timeout, the reason is
that we can't know if the kernel is giving up the unplug. Turns out
that, sometimes, we can. Consider a failed memory hotunplug attempt
where the kernel will error out with the following message:
'pseries-hotplug-mem: Memory indexed-count-remove failed, adding any
removed LMBs'
This happens when there is a LMB that the kernel gave up in removing,
and the LMBs previously marked for removal are now being added back.
This happens in the pseries kernel in [1], dlpar_memory_remove_by_ic()
into dlpar_add_lmb(), and after that update_lmb_associativity_index().
In this function, the kernel is configuring the LMB DRC connector again.
Note that this is a valid usage in LOPAR, as stated in section
"ibm,configure-connector RTAS Call":
'A subsequent sequence of calls to ibm,configure-connector with the same
entry from the “ibm,drc-indexes” or “ibm,drc-info” property will restart
the configuration of devices which were not completely configured.'
We can use this kernel behavior in our favor. If a DRC connector
reconfiguration for a LMB that we marked as unplug pending happens, this
indicates that the kernel changed its mind about the unplug and is
reasserting that it will keep using all the LMBs of the DIMM. In this
case, it's safe to assume that the whole DIMM device unplug was
cancelled.
This patch hops into rtas_ibm_configure_connector() and, in the scenario
described above, clear the unplug state for the DIMM device. This will
not solve all the problems we still have with memory unplug, but it will
cover this case where the kernel reconfigures LMBs after a failed
unplug. We are a bit more resilient, without using an unreliable
timeout, and we didn't make the remaining error cases any worse.
[1] arch/powerpc/platforms/pseries/hotplug-memory.c
Signed-off-by: Daniel Henrique Barboza <danielhb413@gmail.com>
Message-Id: <20210222194531.62717-6-danielhb413@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: David Gibson <david@gibson.dropbear.id.au>
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