patches/old/documentation-mm-update-the-admin-guide-for-mthp-collapse.patch

From: Nico Pache <npache@redhat.com>
Subject: Documentation: mm: update the admin guide for mTHP collapse
Date: Tue, 19 Aug 2025 08:17:42 -0600

Now that we can collapse to mTHPs lets update the admin guide to reflect
these changes and provide proper guidence on how to utilize it.

Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20250819141742.626517-1-npache@redhat.com
Signed-off-by: Nico Pache <npache@redhat.com>
Reviewed-by: Bagas Sanjaya <bagasdotme@gmail.com>
Cc: Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@redhat.com>
Cc: Anshuman Khandual <anshuman.khandual@arm.com>
Cc: Baolin Wang <baolin.wang@linux.alibaba.com>
Cc: Barry Song <baohua@kernel.org>
Cc: Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@arm.com>
Cc: Christoph Lameter (Ampere) <cl@gentwo.org>
Cc: David Hildenbrand <david@redhat.com>
Cc: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com>
Cc: Dev Jain <dev.jain@arm.com>
Cc: Hugh Dickins <hughd@google.com>
Cc: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>
Cc: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org>
Cc: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
Cc: Kefeng Wang <wangkefeng.wang@huawei.com>
Cc: Kirill A. Shuemov <kirill.shutemov@linux.intel.com>
Cc: Liam Howlett <liam.howlett@oracle.com>
Cc: Lorenzo Stoakes <lorenzo.stoakes@oracle.com>
Cc: "Masami Hiramatsu (Google)" <mhiramat@kernel.org>
Cc: Mathieu Desnoyers <mathieu.desnoyers@efficios.com>
Cc: Matthew Wilcox (Oracle) <willy@infradead.org>
Cc: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com>
Cc: Nanyong Sun <sunnanyong@huawei.com>
Cc: Peter Xu <peterx@redhat.com>
Cc: Rafael Aquini <raquini@redhat.com>
Cc: Randy Dunlap <rdunlap@infradead.org>
Cc: Reported-by:Takashi Iwai <tiwai@suse.de>
Cc: Ryan Roberts <ryan.roberts@arm.com>
Cc: Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org>
Cc: Suren Baghdasaryan <surenb@google.com>
Cc: Thomas Hellstrom <thomas.hellstrom@linux.intel.com>
Cc: Usama Arif <usamaarif642@gmail.com>
Cc: Vishal Moola (Oracle) <vishal.moola@gmail.com>
Cc: Will Deacon <will@kernel.org>
Cc: Yang Shi <yang@os.amperecomputing.com>
Cc: Zach O'Keefe <zokeefe@google.com>
Cc: Zi Yan <ziy@nvidia.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
---

 Documentation/admin-guide/mm/transhuge.rst |   19 +++++++++++++------
 1 file changed, 13 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-)

--- a/Documentation/admin-guide/mm/transhuge.rst~documentation-mm-update-the-admin-guide-for-mthp-collapse
+++ a/Documentation/admin-guide/mm/transhuge.rst
@@ -63,7 +63,7 @@ often.
 THP can be enabled system wide or restricted to certain tasks or even
 memory ranges inside task's address space. Unless THP is completely
 disabled, there is ``khugepaged`` daemon that scans memory and
-collapses sequences of basic pages into PMD-sized huge pages.
+collapses sequences of basic pages into huge pages.
 
 The THP behaviour is controlled via :ref:`sysfs <thp_sysfs>`
 interface and using madvise(2) and prctl(2) system calls.
@@ -149,6 +149,18 @@ hugepage sizes have enabled="never". If
 sizes, the kernel will select the most appropriate enabled size for a
 given allocation.
 
+khugepaged uses max_ptes_none scaled to the order of the enabled mTHP size
+to determine collapses. When using mTHPs it's recommended to set
+max_ptes_none low-- ideally less than HPAGE_PMD_NR / 2 (255 on 4k page
+size). This will prevent undesired "creep" behavior that leads to
+continuously collapsing to the largest mTHP size; when we collapse, we are
+bringing in new non-zero pages that will, on a subsequent scan, cause the
+max_ptes_none check of the +1 order to always be satisfied. By limiting
+this to less than half the current order, we make sure we don't cause this
+feedback loop. max_ptes_shared and max_ptes_swap have no effect when
+collapsing to a mTHP, and mTHP collapse will fail on shared or swapped out
+pages.
+
 It's also possible to limit defrag efforts in the VM to generate
 anonymous hugepages in case they're not immediately free to madvise
 regions or to never try to defrag memory and simply fallback to regular
@@ -264,11 +276,6 @@ support the following arguments::
 Khugepaged controls
 -------------------
 
-.. note::
-   khugepaged currently only searches for opportunities to collapse to
-   PMD-sized THP and no attempt is made to collapse to other THP
-   sizes.
-
 khugepaged runs usually at low frequency so while one may not want to
 invoke defrag algorithms synchronously during the page faults, it
 should be worth invoking defrag at least in khugepaged. However it's
_