SchOS/kernel/core/kalloc.c
Nexoniarz b70e36e0a2 kalloc: never-used memory stays a range; 256 GB; free is a counter
Every page of RAM went onto the free list at boot, which means writing
each one -- a link, and kfree()'s 4 KB of junk -- before the first
process ran: 64 GB of memset on a 64 GB machine to say it was free.
Memory nobody has used yet is kept as a cursor and an end per region
now, and kalloc() takes from those once the list of given-back pages
is empty. A page is first touched by whoever asked for it.

That makes the cap on RAM cheap to raise, and PHYSTOP_MAX goes from 64
to 256 GB, which still leaves 248 GB of the kernel PDPT for device
windows. MEMREGION_MAX goes from 32 to 64 for the firmware maps that
cut RAM into many pieces.

kalloc_free_bytes() walked the whole free list under the allocator's
lock -- two million links on 8 GB, every second top or fastfetch was
running, with every CPU that wanted a page waiting behind it. It reads
a counter now. And the buffer cache, which keeps what it grows to, is
reported as Buffers in /proc/meminfo and sysinfo(2) rather than as
memory used by nothing.

Checked under QEMU at 1, 2 and 6 GB: MemFree right, zsh splitting
200000 words, fork loops, a 74 MB write.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01S1giNvrHTrPMPw7V6x1kQ4
2026-10-23 14:05:40 +02:00

345 lines
9.8 KiB
C

// Physical memory allocator, intended to allocate
// memory for user processes, kernel stacks, page table pages,
// and pipe buffers. Allocates 4096-byte pages.
#include "types.h"
#include "defs.h"
#include "param.h"
#include "memlayout.h"
#include "mmu.h"
#include "spinlock.h"
#include "sbuf.h"
#include "dbg.h"
void freerange(void *vstart, void *vend);
extern char end[]; // first address after kernel loaded from ELF file
struct run {
struct run *next;
};
// Free memory is two things: pages that have been allocated and given back,
// on a list through their first word, and ranges that have never been handed
// out at all, as a cursor and an end. kalloc() takes from the list first.
//
// Everything used to go on the list at boot, which means writing every page
// of RAM -- a pointer and, from kfree(), 4 KB of junk -- before the first
// process ran. On a 64 GB machine that is 64 GB of memset to say "this is
// free". A range costs sixteen bytes however large it is, and a page is first
// touched by whoever asked for it.
//
// `nfree` counts both, so the free total is a read rather than a walk of
// millions of links under the lock every time top refreshes.
#define NFRESH (2 * MEMREGION_MAX)
struct fresh {
addr_t next, end; // physical, page aligned
};
struct {
struct spinlock lock;
int use_lock;
struct run *freelist;
struct fresh fresh[NFRESH];
int nfresh, cur; // ranges, and the first that may have pages
uint64 nfree; // pages, list and ranges together
} kmem;
// Before the allocator has a lock, or under it.
static void
add_fresh(addr_t lo, addr_t hi)
{
lo = PGROUNDUP(lo);
hi &= ~(addr_t)(PGSIZE - 1);
if (lo >= hi)
return;
if (kmem.nfresh == NFRESH) {
// Not reachable with MEMREGION_MAX regions per pass; but if it were, the
// old way still works.
freerange(P2V(lo), P2V(hi));
return;
}
kmem.fresh[kmem.nfresh].next = lo;
kmem.fresh[kmem.nfresh].end = hi;
kmem.nfresh++;
kmem.nfree += (hi - lo) / PGSIZE;
}
// Catch kmem.freelist corruption at the point it's touched, rather than
// letting a bad pointer be silently returned by kalloc() and crash whatever
// code dereferences it minutes later on an unrelated call stack.
static void
check_run(struct run *r, char *where)
{
if(r == 0)
return;
if((addr_t)r % PGSIZE || (char*)r < end || V2P(r) >= PHYSTOP){
cprintf("kalloc: corrupt freelist entry %p at %s\n", r, where);
panic("kalloc: corrupt freelist");
}
}
// vstart..vend is the window the kernel is willing to give away: from the end
// of its own image to the bottom of the DMA arena. Inside that window the
// firmware's map decides what is real -- free each usable region clipped to the
// window, rather than walking the whole span and handing out the holes.
//
// The old code walked it as one range, which is what a BIOS map looks like.
// Under UEFI it is not: OVMF puts an ACPI NVS region at 8 MB, so the run
// containing the kernel stopped there and everything above it was lost. The
// window still bounds things at both ends, so nothing below the kernel image
// and nothing inside the DMA arena is ever freed, whatever the map says.
void
kinit1(void *vstart, void *vend)
{
initlock(&kmem.lock, "kmem");
kmem.use_lock = 0;
kmem.freelist = 0; // empty
// No map at all means e820_init() could not parse one; it leaves a single
// synthetic region behind for exactly this reason, so this is belt and
// braces rather than a path anything takes.
if(nmem_usable == 0){
add_fresh(V2P((addr_t)vstart), V2P((addr_t)vend));
return;
}
addr_t lo_limit = V2P((addr_t)vstart);
addr_t hi_limit = V2P((addr_t)vend);
for(int i = 0; i < nmem_usable; i++){
addr_t lo = mem_usable[i].base;
addr_t hi = mem_usable[i].end;
if(lo < lo_limit)
lo = lo_limit;
if(hi > hi_limit)
hi = hi_limit;
if(lo >= hi)
continue;
add_fresh(lo, hi);
}
}
// The page allocator, from the outside.
//
// Counting the free list is O(the free list), which on a gigabyte is a quarter
// of a million links. That is fine for a command someone typed and would not
// be fine anywhere else, so it lives here and nowhere near a hot path -- and
// the walk is bounded, because the one time you most want to run this is when
// you suspect the list is a loop.
static void
mem_dump(struct sbuf *out, const char *arg)
{
(void)arg;
struct run *r;
uint64 n = 0;
int looped = 0;
if (kmem.use_lock)
acquire(&kmem.lock);
for (r = kmem.freelist; r; r = r->next) {
if (++n > (PHYSTOP / PGSIZE) + 16) { looped = 1; break; }
}
if (kmem.use_lock)
release(&kmem.lock);
sb_puts(out, "window 0x");
sb_puthex(out, (addr_t)end, 16);
sb_puts(out, " upward; PHYSTOP is 0x");
sb_puthex(out, (addr_t)PHYSTOP, 16);
sb_putc(out, '\n');
sb_kv(out, "listed ", n, "pages");
sb_kv(out, "free ", kmem.nfree, "pages");
sb_kv(out, " ", kmem.nfree * PGSIZE / 1024, "KB");
for (int i = 0; i < kmem.nfresh; i++) {
sb_puts(out, " never used 0x");
sb_puthex(out, kmem.fresh[i].next, 12);
sb_puts(out, "-0x");
sb_puthex(out, kmem.fresh[i].end, 12);
sb_putc(out, '\n');
}
if (looped)
sb_puts(out, "\n the free list did not end -- it has a CYCLE in it\n");
}
// The page allocator, and the kernel's own image.
//
// Both live here because both are answered from the same two facts -- where
// the kernel ends and what is on the free list -- and because a page inside
// the kernel image being on the free list is precisely the corruption this
// query exists to catch.
static void
mem_whose(struct sbuf *out, struct whose *w)
{
addr_t kva = (addr_t)P2V(w->phys);
struct run *r;
uint64 n = 0;
int found = 0;
if (w->phys >= (addr_t)PHYSTOP)
return;
if (kva < (addr_t)end) {
// Below `end` is the kernel image itself: text, rodata, data and bss, plus
// everything the loader put under it. It is owned, permanently, by nothing
// that can be asked -- so it is reported here.
w->owners++;
sb_puts(out, " kernel image (below `end` at 0x");
sb_puthex(out, (addr_t)end, 16);
sb_puts(out, ")\n");
return;
}
if (kmem.use_lock)
acquire(&kmem.lock);
for (r = kmem.freelist; r; r = r->next) {
if (++n > (PHYSTOP / PGSIZE) + 16)
break; // a cycle; mem_dump says so
if ((addr_t)r == kva) { found = 1; break; }
}
if (kmem.use_lock)
release(&kmem.lock);
for (int i = 0; !found && i < kmem.nfresh; i++)
if (w->phys >= kmem.fresh[i].next && w->phys < kmem.fresh[i].end) {
w->owners++;
w->free_owners++;
sb_puts(out, " kalloc FREE -- never handed out yet\n");
return;
}
if (found) {
w->owners++;
w->free_owners++;
sb_puts(out, " kalloc FREE -- position ");
sb_putu(out, n);
sb_puts(out, " on the free list\n");
}
}
// The memory the loader's page tables could not reach.
//
// kinit1() runs before kvmalloc(), on page tables that map four gigabytes, and
// freeing a page means writing a free-list pointer *into* it -- so anything
// higher would fault. kvmalloc() has now mapped as much of physical memory as
// the machine has, so the rest can be handed over.
//
// Two passes rather than one because of that ordering, and the ordering is
// forced: kvmalloc() calls kalloc() for its own page tables, so the allocator
// has to be working before the map it needs exists.
void
kinit_high(void)
{
uint64 added = 0;
for (int i = 0; i < nmem_usable; i++) {
uint64 lo = mem_usable[i].base;
uint64 hi = mem_usable[i].end;
if (lo < DIRECTMAP_BOOT)
lo = DIRECTMAP_BOOT;
if (hi > phystop)
hi = phystop;
if (lo >= hi)
continue;
if (kmem.use_lock)
acquire(&kmem.lock);
add_fresh(lo, hi);
if (kmem.use_lock)
release(&kmem.lock);
added += hi - lo;
}
if (added)
kinfo("mem: %d MB above 4 GB added to the allocator\n",
(int)(added / (1024 * 1024)));
}
void
kinit2()
{
kmem.use_lock = 1;
dbg_register("mem", mem_dump, "the page allocator's free list");
dbg_register_whose("mem", mem_whose);
}
void
freerange(void *vstart, void *vend)
{
char *p;
p = (char*)PGROUNDUP((addr_t)vstart);
for(; p + PGSIZE <= (char*)vend; p += PGSIZE)
kfree(p);
}
// Free the page of physical memory pointed at by v,
// which normally should have been returned by a
// call to kalloc(). (The exception is when
// initializing the allocator; see kinit above.)
void
kfree(char *v)
{
struct run *r;
if((addr_t)v % PGSIZE || v < end || V2P(v) >= PHYSTOP)
panic("kfree");
// Fill with junk to catch dangling refs.
memset(v, 1, PGSIZE);
if(kmem.use_lock)
acquire(&kmem.lock);
check_run(kmem.freelist, "kfree entry");
r = (struct run*)v;
r->next = kmem.freelist;
kmem.freelist = r;
kmem.nfree++;
if(kmem.use_lock)
release(&kmem.lock);
}
// Allocate one 4096-byte page of physical memory.
// Returns a pointer that the kernel can use.
// Returns 0 if the memory cannot be allocated.
char*
kalloc(void)
{
struct run *r;
if(kmem.use_lock)
acquire(&kmem.lock);
check_run(kmem.freelist, "kalloc entry");
r = kmem.freelist;
if(r){
kmem.freelist = r->next;
} else {
while(kmem.cur < kmem.nfresh &&
kmem.fresh[kmem.cur].next >= kmem.fresh[kmem.cur].end)
kmem.cur++;
if(kmem.cur < kmem.nfresh){
r = (struct run*)P2V(kmem.fresh[kmem.cur].next);
kmem.fresh[kmem.cur].next += PGSIZE;
}
}
if(r)
kmem.nfree--;
if(kmem.use_lock)
release(&kmem.lock);
return (char*)r;
}
// Total free physical memory, in bytes.
//
// This walked the free list under the allocator's lock: two million links on
// 8 GB, cache misses all, every second that top or a status bar was running --
// and every CPU that wanted a page in that time waited for it. One word now.
uint64
kalloc_free_bytes(void)
{
return kmem.nfree * PGSIZE;
}