| ============== |
| Memory Hotplug |
| ============== |
| |
| Created: Jul 28 2007 |
| Add description of notifier of memory hotplug Oct 11 2007 |
| |
| This document is about memory hotplug including how-to-use and current status. |
| Because Memory Hotplug is still under development, contents of this text will |
| be changed often. |
| |
| 1. Introduction |
| 1.1 purpose of memory hotplug |
| 1.2. Phases of memory hotplug |
| 1.3. Unit of Memory online/offline operation |
| 2. Kernel Configuration |
| 3. sysfs files for memory hotplug |
| 4. Physical memory hot-add phase |
| 4.1 Hardware(Firmware) Support |
| 4.2 Notify memory hot-add event by hand |
| 5. Logical Memory hot-add phase |
| 5.1. State of memory |
| 5.2. How to online memory |
| 6. Logical memory remove |
| 6.1 Memory offline and ZONE_MOVABLE |
| 6.2. How to offline memory |
| 7. Physical memory remove |
| 8. Memory hotplug event notifier |
| 9. Future Work List |
| |
| Note(1): x86_64's has special implementation for memory hotplug. |
| This text does not describe it. |
| Note(2): This text assumes that sysfs is mounted at /sys. |
| |
| |
| --------------- |
| 1. Introduction |
| --------------- |
| |
| 1.1 purpose of memory hotplug |
| ------------ |
| Memory Hotplug allows users to increase/decrease the amount of memory. |
| Generally, there are two purposes. |
| |
| (A) For changing the amount of memory. |
| This is to allow a feature like capacity on demand. |
| (B) For installing/removing DIMMs or NUMA-nodes physically. |
| This is to exchange DIMMs/NUMA-nodes, reduce power consumption, etc. |
| |
| (A) is required by highly virtualized environments and (B) is required by |
| hardware which supports memory power management. |
| |
| Linux memory hotplug is designed for both purpose. |
| |
| |
| 1.2. Phases of memory hotplug |
| --------------- |
| There are 2 phases in Memory Hotplug. |
| 1) Physical Memory Hotplug phase |
| 2) Logical Memory Hotplug phase. |
| |
| The First phase is to communicate hardware/firmware and make/erase |
| environment for hotplugged memory. Basically, this phase is necessary |
| for the purpose (B), but this is good phase for communication between |
| highly virtualized environments too. |
| |
| When memory is hotplugged, the kernel recognizes new memory, makes new memory |
| management tables, and makes sysfs files for new memory's operation. |
| |
| If firmware supports notification of connection of new memory to OS, |
| this phase is triggered automatically. ACPI can notify this event. If not, |
| "probe" operation by system administration is used instead. |
| (see Section 4.). |
| |
| Logical Memory Hotplug phase is to change memory state into |
| avaiable/unavailable for users. Amount of memory from user's view is |
| changed by this phase. The kernel makes all memory in it as free pages |
| when a memory range is available. |
| |
| In this document, this phase is described as online/offline. |
| |
| Logical Memory Hotplug phase is triggred by write of sysfs file by system |
| administrator. For the hot-add case, it must be executed after Physical Hotplug |
| phase by hand. |
| (However, if you writes udev's hotplug scripts for memory hotplug, these |
| phases can be execute in seamless way.) |
| |
| |
| 1.3. Unit of Memory online/offline operation |
| ------------ |
| Memory hotplug uses SPARSEMEM memory model. SPARSEMEM divides the whole memory |
| into chunks of the same size. The chunk is called a "section". The size of |
| a section is architecture dependent. For example, power uses 16MiB, ia64 uses |
| 1GiB. The unit of online/offline operation is "one section". (see Section 3.) |
| |
| To determine the size of sections, please read this file: |
| |
| /sys/devices/system/memory/block_size_bytes |
| |
| This file shows the size of sections in byte. |
| |
| ----------------------- |
| 2. Kernel Configuration |
| ----------------------- |
| To use memory hotplug feature, kernel must be compiled with following |
| config options. |
| |
| - For all memory hotplug |
| Memory model -> Sparse Memory (CONFIG_SPARSEMEM) |
| Allow for memory hot-add (CONFIG_MEMORY_HOTPLUG) |
| |
| - To enable memory removal, the followings are also necessary |
| Allow for memory hot remove (CONFIG_MEMORY_HOTREMOVE) |
| Page Migration (CONFIG_MIGRATION) |
| |
| - For ACPI memory hotplug, the followings are also necessary |
| Memory hotplug (under ACPI Support menu) (CONFIG_ACPI_HOTPLUG_MEMORY) |
| This option can be kernel module. |
| |
| - As a related configuration, if your box has a feature of NUMA-node hotplug |
| via ACPI, then this option is necessary too. |
| ACPI0004,PNP0A05 and PNP0A06 Container Driver (under ACPI Support menu) |
| (CONFIG_ACPI_CONTAINER). |
| This option can be kernel module too. |
| |
| -------------------------------- |
| 3 sysfs files for memory hotplug |
| -------------------------------- |
| All sections have their device information under /sys/devices/system/memory as |
| |
| /sys/devices/system/memory/memoryXXX |
| (XXX is section id.) |
| |
| Now, XXX is defined as start_address_of_section / section_size. |
| |
| For example, assume 1GiB section size. A device for a memory starting at |
| 0x100000000 is /sys/device/system/memory/memory4 |
| (0x100000000 / 1Gib = 4) |
| This device covers address range [0x100000000 ... 0x140000000) |
| |
| Under each section, you can see 3 files. |
| |
| /sys/devices/system/memory/memoryXXX/phys_index |
| /sys/devices/system/memory/memoryXXX/phys_device |
| /sys/devices/system/memory/memoryXXX/state |
| |
| 'phys_index' : read-only and contains section id, same as XXX. |
| 'state' : read-write |
| at read: contains online/offline state of memory. |
| at write: user can specify "online", "offline" command |
| 'phys_device': read-only: designed to show the name of physical memory device. |
| This is not well implemented now. |
| |
| NOTE: |
| These directories/files appear after physical memory hotplug phase. |
| |
| |
| -------------------------------- |
| 4. Physical memory hot-add phase |
| -------------------------------- |
| |
| 4.1 Hardware(Firmware) Support |
| ------------ |
| On x86_64/ia64 platform, memory hotplug by ACPI is supported. |
| |
| In general, the firmware (ACPI) which supports memory hotplug defines |
| memory class object of _HID "PNP0C80". When a notify is asserted to PNP0C80, |
| Linux's ACPI handler does hot-add memory to the system and calls a hotplug udev |
| script. This will be done automatically. |
| |
| But scripts for memory hotplug are not contained in generic udev package(now). |
| You may have to write it by yourself or online/offline memory by hand. |
| Please see "How to online memory", "How to offline memory" in this text. |
| |
| If firmware supports NUMA-node hotplug, and defines an object _HID "ACPI0004", |
| "PNP0A05", or "PNP0A06", notification is asserted to it, and ACPI handler |
| calls hotplug code for all of objects which are defined in it. |
| If memory device is found, memory hotplug code will be called. |
| |
| |
| 4.2 Notify memory hot-add event by hand |
| ------------ |
| In some environments, especially virtualized environment, firmware will not |
| notify memory hotplug event to the kernel. For such environment, "probe" |
| interface is supported. This interface depends on CONFIG_ARCH_MEMORY_PROBE. |
| |
| Now, CONFIG_ARCH_MEMORY_PROBE is supported only by powerpc but it does not |
| contain highly architecture codes. Please add config if you need "probe" |
| interface. |
| |
| Probe interface is located at |
| /sys/devices/system/memory/probe |
| |
| You can tell the physical address of new memory to the kernel by |
| |
| % echo start_address_of_new_memory > /sys/devices/system/memory/probe |
| |
| Then, [start_address_of_new_memory, start_address_of_new_memory + section_size) |
| memory range is hot-added. In this case, hotplug script is not called (in |
| current implementation). You'll have to online memory by yourself. |
| Please see "How to online memory" in this text. |
| |
| |
| |
| ------------------------------ |
| 5. Logical Memory hot-add phase |
| ------------------------------ |
| |
| 5.1. State of memory |
| ------------ |
| To see (online/offline) state of memory section, read 'state' file. |
| |
| % cat /sys/device/system/memory/memoryXXX/state |
| |
| |
| If the memory section is online, you'll read "online". |
| If the memory section is offline, you'll read "offline". |
| |
| |
| 5.2. How to online memory |
| ------------ |
| Even if the memory is hot-added, it is not at ready-to-use state. |
| For using newly added memory, you have to "online" the memory section. |
| |
| For onlining, you have to write "online" to the section's state file as: |
| |
| % echo online > /sys/devices/system/memory/memoryXXX/state |
| |
| After this, section memoryXXX's state will be 'online' and the amount of |
| available memory will be increased. |
| |
| Currently, newly added memory is added as ZONE_NORMAL (for powerpc, ZONE_DMA). |
| This may be changed in future. |
| |
| |
| |
| ------------------------ |
| 6. Logical memory remove |
| ------------------------ |
| |
| 6.1 Memory offline and ZONE_MOVABLE |
| ------------ |
| Memory offlining is more complicated than memory online. Because memory offline |
| has to make the whole memory section be unused, memory offline can fail if |
| the section includes memory which cannot be freed. |
| |
| In general, memory offline can use 2 techniques. |
| |
| (1) reclaim and free all memory in the section. |
| (2) migrate all pages in the section. |
| |
| In the current implementation, Linux's memory offline uses method (2), freeing |
| all pages in the section by page migration. But not all pages are |
| migratable. Under current Linux, migratable pages are anonymous pages and |
| page caches. For offlining a section by migration, the kernel has to guarantee |
| that the section contains only migratable pages. |
| |
| Now, a boot option for making a section which consists of migratable pages is |
| supported. By specifying "kernelcore=" or "movablecore=" boot option, you can |
| create ZONE_MOVABLE...a zone which is just used for movable pages. |
| (See also Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt) |
| |
| Assume the system has "TOTAL" amount of memory at boot time, this boot option |
| creates ZONE_MOVABLE as following. |
| |
| 1) When kernelcore=YYYY boot option is used, |
| Size of memory not for movable pages (not for offline) is YYYY. |
| Size of memory for movable pages (for offline) is TOTAL-YYYY. |
| |
| 2) When movablecore=ZZZZ boot option is used, |
| Size of memory not for movable pages (not for offline) is TOTAL - ZZZZ. |
| Size of memory for movable pages (for offline) is ZZZZ. |
| |
| |
| Note) Unfortunately, there is no information to show which section belongs |
| to ZONE_MOVABLE. This is TBD. |
| |
| |
| 6.2. How to offline memory |
| ------------ |
| You can offline a section by using the same sysfs interface that was used in |
| memory onlining. |
| |
| % echo offline > /sys/devices/system/memory/memoryXXX/state |
| |
| If offline succeeds, the state of the memory section is changed to be "offline". |
| If it fails, some error core (like -EBUSY) will be returned by the kernel. |
| Even if a section does not belong to ZONE_MOVABLE, you can try to offline it. |
| If it doesn't contain 'unmovable' memory, you'll get success. |
| |
| A section under ZONE_MOVABLE is considered to be able to be offlined easily. |
| But under some busy state, it may return -EBUSY. Even if a memory section |
| cannot be offlined due to -EBUSY, you can retry offlining it and may be able to |
| offline it (or not). |
| (For example, a page is referred to by some kernel internal call and released |
| soon.) |
| |
| Consideration: |
| Memory hotplug's design direction is to make the possibility of memory offlining |
| higher and to guarantee unplugging memory under any situation. But it needs |
| more work. Returning -EBUSY under some situation may be good because the user |
| can decide to retry more or not by himself. Currently, memory offlining code |
| does some amount of retry with 120 seconds timeout. |
| |
| ------------------------- |
| 7. Physical memory remove |
| ------------------------- |
| Need more implementation yet.... |
| - Notification completion of remove works by OS to firmware. |
| - Guard from remove if not yet. |
| |
| -------------------------------- |
| 8. Memory hotplug event notifier |
| -------------------------------- |
| Memory hotplug has event notifer. There are 6 types of notification. |
| |
| MEMORY_GOING_ONLINE |
| Generated before new memory becomes available in order to be able to |
| prepare subsystems to handle memory. The page allocator is still unable |
| to allocate from the new memory. |
| |
| MEMORY_CANCEL_ONLINE |
| Generated if MEMORY_GOING_ONLINE fails. |
| |
| MEMORY_ONLINE |
| Generated when memory has succesfully brought online. The callback may |
| allocate pages from the new memory. |
| |
| MEMORY_GOING_OFFLINE |
| Generated to begin the process of offlining memory. Allocations are no |
| longer possible from the memory but some of the memory to be offlined |
| is still in use. The callback can be used to free memory known to a |
| subsystem from the indicated memory section. |
| |
| MEMORY_CANCEL_OFFLINE |
| Generated if MEMORY_GOING_OFFLINE fails. Memory is available again from |
| the section that we attempted to offline. |
| |
| MEMORY_OFFLINE |
| Generated after offlining memory is complete. |
| |
| A callback routine can be registered by |
| hotplug_memory_notifier(callback_func, priority) |
| |
| The second argument of callback function (action) is event types of above. |
| The third argument is passed by pointer of struct memory_notify. |
| |
| struct memory_notify { |
| unsigned long start_pfn; |
| unsigned long nr_pages; |
| int status_cahnge_nid; |
| } |
| |
| start_pfn is start_pfn of online/offline memory. |
| nr_pages is # of pages of online/offline memory. |
| status_change_nid is set node id when N_HIGH_MEMORY of nodemask is (will be) |
| set/clear. It means a new(memoryless) node gets new memory by online and a |
| node loses all memory. If this is -1, then nodemask status is not changed. |
| If status_changed_nid >= 0, callback should create/discard structures for the |
| node if necessary. |
| |
| -------------- |
| 9. Future Work |
| -------------- |
| - allowing memory hot-add to ZONE_MOVABLE. maybe we need some switch like |
| sysctl or new control file. |
| - showing memory section and physical device relationship. |
| - showing memory section and node relationship (maybe good for NUMA) |
| - showing memory section is under ZONE_MOVABLE or not |
| - test and make it better memory offlining. |
| - support HugeTLB page migration and offlining. |
| - memmap removing at memory offline. |
| - physical remove memory. |
| |