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

[Eric B Munson]

On Tue, 25 Aug 2015, 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.

This was not my concern.  Instead, I was wondering how to keep lock on
fault sematics with mremap if we do not have a VMA flag.  As a user, it
would surprise me if a region I mlocked with lock on fault and then
remapped to a larger size was fully populated and locked by the mremap
call.

> 
> 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.
> "

You are proposing that mremap would scan the PTEs as Vlastimil has
suggested?

> 
> 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?
> 
> 
> -- 
> Michal Hocko
> SUSE Labs

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