Re: [PATCH 1/4] mm: Trial do_wp_page() simplification

[Jason Gunthorpe]

On Mon, Sep 14, 2020 at 05:15:15PM -0400, Peter Xu wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 14, 2020 at 02:34:36PM -0400, Peter Xu wrote:
> > On Mon, Sep 14, 2020 at 10:32:11AM -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> > > On Mon, Sep 14, 2020 at 7:38 AM Jason Gunthorpe <jgg@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > I don't have a detailed explanation right now, but this patch appears
> > > > to be causing a regression where RDMA subsystem tests fail. Tests
> > > > return to normal when this patch is reverted.
> > > >
> > > > It kind of looks like the process is not seeing DMA'd data to a
> > > > pin_user_pages()?
> > > 
> > > I'm a nincompoop. I actually _talked_ to Hugh Dickins about this when
> > > he raised concerns, and I dismissed his concerns with "but PAGE_PIN is
> > > special".
> > > 
> > > As usual, Hugh was right. Page pinning certainly _is_ special, but
> > > it's not that different from the regular GUP code.
> > > 
> > > But in the meantime, I have a lovely confirmation from the kernel test
> > > robot, saying that commit 09854ba94c results in a
> > > "vm-scalability.throughput 31.4% improvement", which was what I was
> > > hoping for - the complexity wasn't just complexity, it was active
> > > badness due to the page locking horrors.
> > > 
> > > I think what we want to do is basically do the "early COW", but only
> > > do it for FOLL_PIN (and not turn them into writes for anything but the
> > > COW code). So basically redo the "enforced COW mechanism", but rather
> > > than do it for everything, now do it only for FOLL_PIN, and only in
> > > that COW path.
> > > 
> > > Peter - any chance you can look at this? I'm still looking at the page
> > > lock fairness performance regression, although I now think I have a
> > > test patch for Phoronix to test out.
> > 
> > Sure, I'll try to prepare something like that and share it shortly.
> 
> Jason, would you please try the attached patch to see whether it unbreaks the
> rdma test?  Thanks!

Hi Peter,

My tester says the patch does not help (modified as Leon pointed to
make it compile).

He did another test where all forks were removed and the test program
succeeds. Overall in our test suites we see failurs on tests that
involve fork and success on tests that don't.

So fork and COW seem very likely to be the issue.

Thanks,
Jason