Re: [PATCH RFC 0/3] MAP_POPULATE for device memory

[David Hildenbrand]

On 07.03.22 15:22, Jarkko Sakkinen wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 07, 2022 at 11:12:44AM +0100, David Hildenbrand wrote:
>> On 06.03.22 06:32, Jarkko Sakkinen wrote:
>>> For device memory (aka VM_IO | VM_PFNMAP) MAP_POPULATE does nothing. Allow
>>> to use that for initializing the device memory by providing a new callback
>>> f_ops->populate() for the purpose.
>>>
>>> SGX patches are provided to show the callback in context.
>>>
>>> An obvious alternative is a ioctl but it is less elegant and requires
>>> two syscalls (mmap + ioctl) per memory range, instead of just one
>>> (mmap).
>>
>> What about extending MADV_POPULATE_READ | MADV_POPULATE_WRITE to support
>> VM_IO | VM_PFNMAP (as well?) ?
> 
> What would be a proper point to bind that behaviour? For mmap/mprotect it'd
> be probably populate_vma_page_range() because that would span both mmap()
> and mprotect() (Dave's suggestion in this thread).

MADV_POPULATE_* ends up in faultin_vma_page_range(), right next to
populate_vma_page_range(). So it might require a similar way to hook
into the driver I guess.

> 
> For MAP_POPULATE I did not have hard proof to show that it would be used
> by other drivers but for madvice() you can find at least a few ioctl
> based implementations:
> 
> $ git grep -e madv --and \( -e ioc \)  drivers/
> drivers/gpu/drm/i915/gem/i915_gem_ioctls.h:int i915_gem_madvise_ioctl(struct drm_device *dev, void *data,
> drivers/gpu/drm/i915/i915_driver.c:     DRM_IOCTL_DEF_DRV(I915_GEM_MADVISE, i915_gem_madvise_ioctl, DRM_RENDER_ALLOW),
> drivers/gpu/drm/i915/i915_gem.c:i915_gem_madvise_ioctl(struct drm_device *dev, void *data,
> drivers/gpu/drm/msm/msm_drv.c:static int msm_ioctl_gem_madvise(struct drm_device *dev, void *data,
> drivers/gpu/drm/msm/msm_drv.c:  DRM_IOCTL_DEF_DRV(MSM_GEM_MADVISE,  msm_ioctl_gem_madvise,  DRM_RENDER_ALLOW),
> drivers/gpu/drm/panfrost/panfrost_drv.c:static int panfrost_ioctl_madvise(struct drm_device *dev, void *data,
> drivers/gpu/drm/vc4/vc4_drv.c:  DRM_IOCTL_DEF_DRV(VC4_GEM_MADVISE, vc4_gem_madvise_ioctl, DRM_RENDER_ALLOW),
> drivers/gpu/drm/vc4/vc4_drv.h:int vc4_gem_madvise_ioctl(struct drm_device *dev, void *data,
> drivers/gpu/drm/vc4/vc4_gem.c:int vc4_gem_madvise_ioctl(struct drm_device *dev, void *data,
> 
> IMHO this also provides supportive claim for MAP_POPULATE, and yeah, I
> agree that to be consistent implementation, both madvice() and MAP_POPULATE
> should work.

MADV_POPULATE_WRITE + MADV_DONTNEED/FALLOC_FL_PUNCH_HOLE is one way to
dynamically manage memory consumption inside a sparse memory mapping
(preallocate/populate via MADV_POPULATE_WRITE, discard via
MADV_DONTNEED/FALLOC_FL_PUNCH_HOLE).  Extending that whole mechanism to
deal with VM_IO | VM_PFNMAP mappings as well could be interesting.

At least I herd about some ideas where we might want to dynamically
expose memory to a VM (via virtio-mem) inside a sparse memory mapping,
and the memory in that sparse memory mapping is provided from a
dedicated memory pool managed by a device driver -- not just using
ordinary anonymous/file/hugetlb memory as we do right now.

Now, this is certainly stuff for the future, I just wanted to mention it.

-- 
Thanks,

David / dhildenb