On Tue, Apr 21, 2026 at 12:56:00PM +0200, David Hildenbrand (Arm) wrote: > On 4/20/26 14:51, Michael S. Tsirkin wrote: > > Add free_frozen_pages_hint(page, order, hints) to free a page > > while marking it as pre-zeroed when PGHINT_ZEROED is set. > > The PG_zeroed flag is set after __free_pages_prepare so it > > survives on the free list. > > > > Add __folio_put_hint(), folio_put_hint(), and put_page_hint() > > wrappers for the put_page path. > > Can we defer that change?
We can - it's a dependency of the balloon deflate, which you asked me to implement. I'm more interested in reporting, myself. > Putting a page with a hint, when there might still be other users of the > page is a weird interface. The hint is just ignored in this case. > In the long term, all balloon pages (PG_offline pages) will be frozen > pages, and definitely not folios. > > Frozen pages don't have a refcount. > > It would then be sufficient to have the single owner of the page call > something like free_frozen_zeroed_page(). > > Now, to convert balloon pages to be frozen requires some more work, > primarily to balloon migration handling, unfortunately. I have it on my > todo list, but it will take a while. > > -- > Cheers, > > David
