Re: [PATCH v7 3/6] mm: Introduce VM_LOCKONFAULT

From: Vlastimil Babka
Date: Tue Aug 25 2015 - 09:55:55 EST


On 08/25/2015 03:41 PM, Michal Hocko wrote:
On Fri 21-08-15 14:31:32, Eric B Munson wrote:
[...]
I am in the middle of implementing lock on fault this way, but I cannot
see how we will hanlde mremap of a lock on fault region. Say we have
the following:

addr = mmap(len, MAP_ANONYMOUS, ...);
mlock(addr, len, MLOCK_ONFAULT);
...
mremap(addr, len, 2 * len, ...)

There is no way for mremap to know that the area being remapped was lock
on fault so it will be locked and prefaulted by remap. How can we avoid
this without tracking per vma if it was locked with lock or lock on
fault?

Yes mremap is a problem and it is very much similar to mmap(MAP_LOCKED).
It doesn't guarantee the full mlock semantic because it leaves partially
populated ranges behind without reporting any error.

Hm, that's right.

Considering the current behavior I do not thing it would be terrible
thing to do what Konstantin was suggesting and populate only the full
ranges in a best effort mode (it is done so anyway) and document the
behavior properly.
"
If the memory segment specified by old_address and old_size is
locked (using mlock(2) or similar), then this lock is maintained
when the segment is resized and/or relocated. As a consequence,
the amount of memory locked by the process may change.

If the range is already fully populated and the range is
enlarged the new range is attempted to be fully populated
as well to preserve the full mlock semantic but there is no
guarantee this will succeed. Partially populated (e.g. created by
mlock(MLOCK_ONFAULT)) ranges do not have the full mlock semantic
so they are not populated on resize.
"

So what we have as a result is that partially populated ranges are
preserved and fully populated ones work in the best effort mode the same
way as they are now.

Does that sound at least remotely reasonably?

I'll basically repeat what I said earlier:

- mremap scanning existing pte's to figure out the population would slow it down for no good reason
- it would be unreliable anyway:
- example: was the area completely populated because MLOCK_ONFAULT was not used or because the process faulted it already
- example: was the area not completely populated because MLOCK_ONFAULT was used, or because mmap(MAP_LOCKED) failed to populate it fully?

I think the first point is a pointless regression for workloads that use just plain mlock() and don't want the onfault semantics. Unless there's some shortcut? Does vma have a counter of how much is populated? (I don't think so?)
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/