The patch titled Subject: ksm: use range-walk function to jump over holes in scan_get_next_rmap_item has been added to the -mm mm-hotfixes-unstable branch. Its filename is ksm-use-range-walk-function-to-jump-over-holes-in-scan_get_next_rmap_item.patch

This patch will shortly appear at https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/akpm/25-new.git/tree/patches...

This patch will later appear in the mm-hotfixes-unstable branch at git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/akpm/mm

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------------------------------------------------------ From: Pedro Demarchi Gomes pedrodemargomes@gmail.com Subject: ksm: use range-walk function to jump over holes in scan_get_next_rmap_item Date: Wed, 22 Oct 2025 12:30:59 -0300

Currently, scan_get_next_rmap_item() walks every page address in a VMA to locate mergeable pages. This becomes highly inefficient when scanning large virtual memory areas that contain mostly unmapped regions, causing ksmd to use large amount of cpu without deduplicating much pages.

This patch replaces the per-address lookup with a range walk using walk_page_range(). The range walker allows KSM to skip over entire unmapped holes in a VMA, avoiding unnecessary lookups. This problem was previously discussed in [1].

Consider the following test program which creates a 32 TiB mapping in the virtual address space but only populates a single page:

#include <unistd.h> #include <stdio.h> #include <sys/mman.h>

/* 32 TiB */ const size_t size = 32ul * 1024 * 1024 * 1024 * 1024;

int main() { char *area = mmap(NULL, size, PROT_READ | PROT_WRITE, MAP_NORESERVE | MAP_PRIVATE | MAP_ANON, -1, 0);

if (area == MAP_FAILED) { perror("mmap() failed\n"); return -1; }

/* Populate a single page such that we get an anon_vma. */ *area = 0;

/* Enable KSM. */ madvise(area, size, MADV_MERGEABLE); pause(); return 0; }

$ ./ksm-sparse & $ echo 1 > /sys/kernel/mm/ksm/run

Without this patch ksmd uses 100% of the cpu for a long time (more then 1 hour in my test machine) scanning all the 32 TiB virtual address space that contain only one mapped page. This makes ksmd essentially deadlocked not able to deduplicate anything of value. With this patch ksmd walks only the one mapped page and skips the rest of the 32 TiB virtual address space, making the scan fast using little cpu.

Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20251023035841.41406-1-pedrodemargomes@gmail.com Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20251022153059.22763-1-pedrodemargomes@gmail.com Link: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-mm/423de7a3-1c62-4e72-8e79-19a6413e420c@redhat... [1] Fixes: 31dbd01f3143 ("ksm: Kernel SamePage Merging") Signed-off-by: Pedro Demarchi Gomes pedrodemargomes@gmail.com Co-developed-by: David Hildenbrand david@redhat.com Signed-off-by: David Hildenbrand david@redhat.com Reported-by: craftfever craftfever@airmail.cc Closes: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/020cf8de6e773bb78ba7614ef250129f11a63781@murena.io Suggested-by: David Hildenbrand david@redhat.com Acked-by: David Hildenbrand david@redhat.com Cc: Chengming Zhou chengming.zhou@linux.dev Cc: xu xin xu.xin16@zte.com.cn Cc: stable@vger.kernel.org Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton akpm@linux-foundation.org ---

mm/ksm.c | 113 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++----- 1 file changed, 104 insertions(+), 9 deletions(-)

--- a/mm/ksm.c~ksm-use-range-walk-function-to-jump-over-holes-in-scan_get_next_rmap_item +++ a/mm/ksm.c @@ -2455,6 +2455,95 @@ static bool should_skip_rmap_item(struct return true; }

+struct ksm_next_page_arg { + struct folio *folio; + struct page *page; + unsigned long addr; +}; + +static int ksm_next_page_pmd_entry(pmd_t *pmdp, unsigned long addr, unsigned long end, + struct mm_walk *walk) +{ + struct ksm_next_page_arg *private = walk->private; + struct vm_area_struct *vma = walk->vma; + pte_t *start_ptep = NULL, *ptep, pte; + struct mm_struct *mm = walk->mm; + struct folio *folio; + struct page *page; + spinlock_t *ptl; + pmd_t pmd; + + if (ksm_test_exit(mm)) + return 0; + + cond_resched(); + + pmd = pmdp_get_lockless(pmdp); + if (!pmd_present(pmd)) + return 0; + + if (IS_ENABLED(CONFIG_TRANSPARENT_HUGEPAGE) && pmd_leaf(pmd)) { + ptl = pmd_lock(mm, pmdp); + pmd = pmdp_get(pmdp); + + if (!pmd_present(pmd)) { + goto not_found_unlock; + } else if (pmd_leaf(pmd)) { + page = vm_normal_page_pmd(vma, addr, pmd); + if (!page) + goto not_found_unlock; + folio = page_folio(page); + + if (folio_is_zone_device(folio) || !folio_test_anon(folio)) + goto not_found_unlock; + + page += ((addr & (PMD_SIZE - 1)) >> PAGE_SHIFT); + goto found_unlock; + } + spin_unlock(ptl); + } + + start_ptep = pte_offset_map_lock(mm, pmdp, addr, &ptl); + if (!start_ptep) + return 0; + + for (ptep = start_ptep; addr < end; ptep++, addr += PAGE_SIZE) { + pte = ptep_get(ptep); + + if (!pte_present(pte)) + continue; + + page = vm_normal_page(vma, addr, pte); + if (!page) + continue; + folio = page_folio(page); + + if (folio_is_zone_device(folio) || !folio_test_anon(folio)) + continue; + goto found_unlock; + } + +not_found_unlock: + spin_unlock(ptl); + if (start_ptep) + pte_unmap(start_ptep); + return 0; +found_unlock: + folio_get(folio); + spin_unlock(ptl); + if (start_ptep) + pte_unmap(start_ptep); + private->page = page; + private->folio = folio; + private->addr = addr; + return 1; +} + +static struct mm_walk_ops ksm_next_page_ops = { + .pmd_entry = ksm_next_page_pmd_entry, + .walk_lock = PGWALK_RDLOCK, +}; + static struct ksm_rmap_item *scan_get_next_rmap_item(struct page **page) { struct mm_struct *mm; @@ -2542,21 +2631,27 @@ next_mm: ksm_scan.address = vma->vm_end;

while (ksm_scan.address < vma->vm_end) { + struct ksm_next_page_arg ksm_next_page_arg; struct page *tmp_page = NULL; - struct folio_walk fw; struct folio *folio;

if (ksm_test_exit(mm)) break;

- folio = folio_walk_start(&fw, vma, ksm_scan.address, 0); - if (folio) { - if (!folio_is_zone_device(folio) && - folio_test_anon(folio)) { - folio_get(folio); - tmp_page = fw.page; - } - folio_walk_end(&fw, vma); + int found; + + found = walk_page_range_vma(vma, ksm_scan.address, + vma->vm_end, + &ksm_next_page_ops, + &ksm_next_page_arg); + + if (found > 0) { + folio = ksm_next_page_arg.folio; + tmp_page = ksm_next_page_arg.page; + ksm_scan.address = ksm_next_page_arg.addr; + } else { + VM_WARN_ON_ONCE(found < 0); + ksm_scan.address = vma->vm_end - PAGE_SIZE; }

if (tmp_page) { _

Patches currently in -mm which might be from pedrodemargomes@gmail.com are

ksm-use-range-walk-function-to-jump-over-holes-in-scan_get_next_rmap_item.patch