Re: [PATCH 00/25] mm: Page fault accounting cleanups

[Michael Ellerman]

Linus Torvalds <torvalds@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
> On Mon, Jun 15, 2020 at 3:16 PM Peter Xu <peterx@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> This series tries to address all of them by introducing mm_fault_accounting()
>> first, so that we move all the page fault accounting into the common code base,
>> then call it properly from arch pf handlers just like handle_mm_fault().
>
> Hmm.
>
> So having looked at this a bit more, I'd actually like to go even
> further, and just get rid of the per-architecture code _entirely_.

<snip>

> One detail worth noting: I do wonder if we should put the
>
>     perf_sw_event(PERF_COUNT_SW_PAGE_FAULTS, 1, regs, addr);
>
> just in the arch code at the top of the fault handling, and consider
> it entirely unrelated to the major/minor fault handling. The
> major/minor faults fundamnetally are about successes. But the plain
> PERF_COUNT_SW_PAGE_FAULTS could be about things that fail, including
> things that never even get to this point at all.

Yeah I think we should keep it in the arch code at roughly the top.

If it's moved to the end you could have a process spinning taking bad
page faults (and fixing them up), and see no sign of it from the perf
page fault counters.

cheers