Commit 735ecdfaf4e8 ("mm/vmscan: avoid split lazyfree THP during shrink_folio_list()") prevents the splitting of MADV_FREE'd THP in madvise.c. However, those folios are still added to the deferred_split list in try_to_unmap_one() because we are unmapping PTEs and removing rmap entries one by one. Firstly, this has rendered the following counter somewhat confusing, /sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/hugepages-size/stats/split_deferred The split_deferred counter was originally designed to track operations such as partial unmap or madvise of large folios. However, in practice, most split_deferred cases arise from memory reclamation of aligned lazyfree mTHPs as observed by Tangquan. This discrepancy has made the split_deferred counter highly misleading. Secondly, this approach is slow because it requires iterating through each PTE and removing the rmap one by one for a large folio. In fact, all PTEs of a pte-mapped large folio should be unmapped at once, and the entire folio should be removed from the rmap as a whole. Thirdly, it also increases the risk of a race condition where lazyfree folios are incorrectly set back to swapbacked, as a speculative folio_get may occur in the shrinker's callback. deferred_split_scan() might call folio_try_get(folio) since we have added the folio to split_deferred list while removing rmap for the 1st subpage, and while we are scanning the 2nd to nr_pages PTEs of this folio in try_to_unmap_one(), the entire mTHP could be transitioned back to swap-backed because the reference count is incremented, which can make "ref_count == 1 + map_count" within try_to_unmap_one() false. /* * The only page refs must be one from isolation * plus the rmap(s) (dropped by discard:). */ if (ref_count == 1 + map_count && (!folio_test_dirty(folio) || ... (vma->vm_flags & VM_DROPPABLE))) { dec_mm_counter(mm, MM_ANONPAGES); goto discard; } This patchset resolves the issue by marking only genuinely dirty folios as swap-backed, as suggested by David, and transitioning to batched unmapping of entire folios in try_to_unmap_one(). Consequently, the deferred_split count drops to zero, and memory reclamation performance improves significantly — reclaiming 64KiB lazyfree large folios is now 2.5x faster(The specific data is embedded in the changelog of patch 3/4). By the way, while the patchset is primarily aimed at PTE-mapped large folios, Baolin and Lance also found that try_to_unmap_one() handles lazyfree redirtied PMD-mapped large folios inefficiently — it splits the PMD into PTEs and iterates over them. This patchset removes the unnecessary splitting, enabling us to skip redirtied PMD-mapped large folios 3.5X faster during memory reclamation. (The specific data can be found in the changelog of patch 4/4). v3: fix checkformat. v2: add bugfix patch5. Barry Song (4): mm: set folio swapbacked iff folios are dirty in try_to_unmap_one mm: support tlbbatch flush for a range of PTEs mm: support batched unmap for lazyfree large folios during reclamation mm: avoid splitting pmd for lazyfree pmd-mapped THP in try_to_unmap Lance Yang (1): mm/rmap: fix potential out-of-bounds page table access during batched unmap arch/arm64/include/asm/tlbflush.h | 23 +++-- arch/arm64/mm/contpte.c | 2 +- arch/x86/include/asm/tlbflush.h | 3 +- mm/huge_memory.c | 24 ++++-- mm/rmap.c | 139 ++++++++++++++++++++---------- 5 files changed, 125 insertions(+), 66 deletions(-) -- 2.25.1