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

From: Jason Gunthorpe
Date: Fri Sep 18 2020 - 12:19:06 EST


On Thu, Sep 17, 2020 at 03:03:32PM -0400, Peter Xu wrote:

> Another side effect I can think of is that we'll bring some uncertainty to
> fork() starting from when page_maybe_dma_pinned() is used, since it's sometimes
> bogus (hpage_pincount_available()==false) so some COWs might be triggered
> during fork() even when not necessary if we've got some normal pages with too
> many refcounts (over GUP_PIN_COUNTING_BIAS). But assuming that's not a big
> deal since it should be extremely rare, or is it?..

Looking at this a bit more.. A complete implementation will have to
touch all four places doing write protect during fork:

copy_one_pte(struct mm_struct *dst_mm, struct mm_struct *src_mm,
pte_t *dst_pte, pte_t *src_pte, struct vm_area_struct *vma,
unsigned long addr, int *rss)
{
[..]
if (is_cow_mapping(vm_flags) && pte_write(pte)) {
ptep_set_wrprotect(src_mm, addr, src_pte);
pte = pte_wrprotect(pte);

int copy_huge_pmd(struct mm_struct *dst_mm, struct mm_struct *src_mm,
pmd_t *dst_pmd, pmd_t *src_pmd, unsigned long addr,
struct vm_area_struct *vma)
{
[..]
pmdp_set_wrprotect(src_mm, addr, src_pmd);
pmd = pmd_mkold(pmd_wrprotect(pmd));

int copy_huge_pud(struct mm_struct *dst_mm, struct mm_struct *src_mm,
pud_t *dst_pud, pud_t *src_pud, unsigned long addr,
struct vm_area_struct *vma)
{
[..]
pudp_set_wrprotect(src_mm, addr, src_pud);
pud = pud_mkold(pud_wrprotect(pud));

int copy_hugetlb_page_range(struct mm_struct *dst, struct mm_struct *src,
struct vm_area_struct *vma)
{
[..]
if (cow) {
huge_ptep_set_wrprotect(src, addr, src_pte);

As a regression I'm pretty sure we will hit only the PTE and PMD
cases.

Most likely the other two could be done outside the rc cycle

Jason