[Xen-devel] Populate-on-demand memory problem

[Dietmar Hahn <dietmar.hahn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi list,

we ported our system from Novel SLES11 using xen-3.3 to SLES11 SP1 using
xen-4.0 and ran into some trouble with the pod stuff.
We have a HVM guest and already used target_mem < max_mem on startup of
the guest.
With the new xen version we get
(XEN) p2m_pod_demand_populate: Out of populate-on-demand memory! tot_pages 
792792 pod_entries 800
I did some code revisions and looking at pod patches 
(http://lists.xensource.com/archives/html/xen-devel/2008-12/msg01030.html)
to understand the behavior. We use the following configuration:
maxmem = 4096
memory = 3096
What I see is:
 - our guest boots with e820 map showing maxmem.
 - reading xenstore memory/target returns '3170304' means 3096MB, 792576 pages
Now our guest uses the target memory and gives back 1000MB via
hypervisor call XENMEM_decrease_reservation to the hypervisor.

Later I try to map the complete domU memory into dom0 kernel space and here I
get the 'Out of populate-on-demand memory' crash.

As far as I understand (ignoring the p2m_pod_emergency_sweep)
- on populating a page
   - the page is taken from the pod cache
   - p2md->pod.count--
   - p2md->pod.entry_count--
   - page gets type p2m_ram_rw
- decreasing a page
   - p2md->pod.entry_count--
   - page gets type p2m_invalid

So if the guest uses all the target memory and gave back all
the (maxmem-target) memory p2md->pod.count and p2md->pod.entry_count should be
zero.
I added some tracing in the hypervisor and see on start of the guest:
p2m_pod_set_cache_target: p2md->pod.count: 791264 tot_pages: 791744
This pod.count is lower then the target seen in the guest!
On the first call of p2m_pod_demand_populate() I can see
p2m_pod_demand_populate: p2md->pod.entry_count: 1048064 p2md->pod.count: 791264 
tot_pages: 792792
So pod.entry_count=1048064 (4096MB) complies to maxmem but
pod.count=791264 is lower then the target memory in xenstore.

Any help is welcome!
Thanks.
Dietmar.

-- 
Company details: http://ts.fujitsu.com/imprint.html

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