[merged mm-stable] mm-mempolicy-fix-automatic-numa-balancing-for-shmem.patch removed from -mm tree

The quilt patch titled
     Subject: mm: mempolicy: fix automatic numa balancing for shmem
has been removed from the -mm tree.  Its filename was
     mm-mempolicy-fix-automatic-numa-balancing-for-shmem.patch

This patch was dropped because it was merged into the mm-stable branch
of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/akpm/mm

------------------------------------------------------
From: Johannes Weiner <[email protected]>
Subject: mm: mempolicy: fix automatic numa balancing for shmem
Date: Mon, 29 Jun 2026 12:33:37 -0400

Neha reports that mapped shmem aren't considered for NUMA balancing,
noting convergence problems and bandwidth bottlenecking for cachelib based
workloads on tiered memory systems.

Looking at the code and going through the git history, this doesn't
actually seem intentional:

Commit fc3147245d19 ("mm: numa: Limit NUMA scanning to migrate-on-fault
VMAs") added a vma_policy_mof() gate to task_numa_work() so VMAs whose
policy lacks MPOL_F_MOF are skipped from NUMA balancing scans.  The
motivation was a real usecase: Oracle was pinning shared segments with
mbind(MPOL_BIND) so trapping faults was both expensive and pointless.

The handling of NULL from vm_ops->get_policy, however, treated "user
explicitly opted out" the same as "user never specified anything." For
VMAs whose shared policy is absent - the common case for shmem - the scan
was disabled too.

This issue is old.  It probably hurts less in conventional NUMA.  But it's
very noticeable on tiered systems, where entire tmpfs workingsets can get
stuck on lower-bandwidth memory.

Fix this by having vma_policy_mof() use __get_vma_policy() directly, and
thereby handle the fallback to task policy (-> preferred_node_policy() has
MPOL_F_MOF per default).  Every other consumer of vm_ops->get_policy
already handles it this way, the scan-eligibility check was the outlier.

This preserves Mel's intended fix: don't scan stuff the user explicitly
pinned.  But allow default policy vmas to participate in balancing.

Link: https://lore.kernel.org/[email protected]
Fixes: fc3147245d19 ("mm: numa: Limit NUMA scanning to migrate-on-fault VMAs")
Signed-off-by: Johannes Weiner <[email protected]>
Reported-by: Neha Gholkar <[email protected]>
Tested-by: Neha Gholkar <[email protected]>
Reviewed-by: Gregory Price <[email protected]>
Acked-by: David Hildenbrand (Arm) <[email protected]>
Acked-by: Balbir Singh <[email protected]>
Cc: Alistair Popple <[email protected]>
Cc: Byungchul Park <[email protected]>
Cc: "Huang, Ying" <[email protected]>
Cc: Joshua Hahn <[email protected]>
Cc: Matthew Brost <[email protected]>
Cc: Rakie Kim <[email protected]>
Cc: Zi Yan <[email protected]>
Cc: <[email protected]>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <[email protected]>
---

 mm/mempolicy.c |   21 ++++++---------------
 1 file changed, 6 insertions(+), 15 deletions(-)

--- a/mm/mempolicy.c~mm-mempolicy-fix-automatic-numa-balancing-for-shmem
+++ a/mm/mempolicy.c
@@ -2060,24 +2060,15 @@ struct mempolicy *get_vma_policy(struct
 bool vma_policy_mof(struct vm_area_struct *vma)
 {
 	struct mempolicy *pol;
+	pgoff_t ilx;
+	bool mof;
 
-	if (vma->vm_ops && vma->vm_ops->get_policy) {
-		bool ret = false;
-		pgoff_t ilx;		/* ignored here */
-
-		pol = vma->vm_ops->get_policy(vma, vma->vm_start, &ilx);
-		if (pol && (pol->flags & MPOL_F_MOF))
-			ret = true;
-		mpol_cond_put(pol);
-
-		return ret;
-	}
-
-	pol = vma->vm_policy;
+	pol = __get_vma_policy(vma, vma->vm_start, &ilx);
 	if (!pol)
 		pol = get_task_policy(current);
-
-	return pol->flags & MPOL_F_MOF;
+	mof = pol->flags & MPOL_F_MOF;
+	mpol_cond_put(pol);
+	return mof;
 }
 
 bool apply_policy_zone(struct mempolicy *policy, enum zone_type zone)
_

Patches currently in -mm which might be from [email protected] are