tree 2dec04c2b8029862b0d9d2375add13d2ee76f62d
parent 8dbe22c6868b8a5efd1df3d0c5150524fabe61ff
author David Hildenbrand <david@redhat.com> 1620647002 +0200
committer Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@redhat.com> 1623781658 +0200

util/mmap-alloc: Support RAM_NORESERVE via MAP_NORESERVE under Linux

Let's support RAM_NORESERVE via MAP_NORESERVE on Linux. The flag has no
effect on most shared mappings - except for hugetlbfs and anonymous memory.

Linux man page:
  "MAP_NORESERVE: Do not reserve swap space for this mapping. When swap
  space is reserved, one has the guarantee that it is possible to modify
  the mapping. When swap space is not reserved one might get SIGSEGV
  upon a write if no physical memory is available. See also the discussion
  of the file /proc/sys/vm/overcommit_memory in proc(5). In kernels before
  2.6, this flag had effect only for private writable mappings."

Note that the "guarantee" part is wrong with memory overcommit in Linux.

Also, in Linux hugetlbfs is treated differently - we configure reservation
of huge pages from the pool, not reservation of swap space (huge pages
cannot be swapped).

The rough behavior is [1]:
a) !Hugetlbfs:

  1) Without MAP_NORESERVE *or* with memory overcommit under Linux
     disabled ("/proc/sys/vm/overcommit_memory == 2"), the following
     accounting/reservation happens:
      For a file backed map
       SHARED or READ-only - 0 cost (the file is the map not swap)
       PRIVATE WRITABLE - size of mapping per instance

      For an anonymous or /dev/zero map
       SHARED   - size of mapping
       PRIVATE READ-only - 0 cost (but of little use)
       PRIVATE WRITABLE - size of mapping per instance

  2) With MAP_NORESERVE, no accounting/reservation happens.

b) Hugetlbfs:

  1) Without MAP_NORESERVE, huge pages are reserved.

  2) With MAP_NORESERVE, no huge pages are reserved.

Note: With "/proc/sys/vm/overcommit_memory == 0", we were already able
to configure it for !hugetlbfs globally; this toggle now allows
configuring it more fine-grained, not for the whole system.

The target use case is virtio-mem, which dynamically exposes memory
inside a large, sparse memory area to the VM.

[1] https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/vm/overcommit-accounting

Reviewed-by: Peter Xu <peterx@redhat.com>
Acked-by: Eduardo Habkost <ehabkost@redhat.com> for memory backend and machine core
Signed-off-by: David Hildenbrand <david@redhat.com>
Message-Id: <20210510114328.21835-10-david@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@redhat.com>