Re: [PATCH v1] mm/gup: adjust stale comment for RCU GUP-fast

[David Hildenbrand]

On 01.09.22 20:35, Yang Shi wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 1, 2022 at 11:07 AM Peter Xu <peterx@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>
>> On Thu, Sep 01, 2022 at 10:50:48AM -0700, Yang Shi wrote:
>>> Yeah, because THP collapse does copy the data before clearing pte. If
>>> we want to remove pmdp_collapse_flush() by just clearing pmd, we
>>> should clear *AND* flush pte before copying the data IIRC.
>>
>> Yes tlb flush is still needed.  IIUC the generic pmdp_collapse_flush() will
>> still be working (with the pte level flushing there) but it should just
>> start to work for all archs, so potentially we could drop the arch-specific
>> pmdp_collapse_flush()s, mostly the ppc impl.
> 
> I'm don't know why powperpc needs to have its specific
> pmdp_collapse_flush() in the first place, not only the mandatory IPI
> broadcast, but also the specific implementation of pmd tlb flush. But
> anyway the IPI broadcast could be removed at least IMO.
> 

pmdp_collapse_flush() is overwritten on book3s only. It either translates
to radix__pmdp_collapse_flush() or hash__pmdp_collapse_flush().


radix__pmdp_collapse_flush() has a comment explaining the situation:


+       /*
+        * pmdp collapse_flush need to ensure that there are no parallel gup
+        * walk after this call. This is needed so that we can have stable
+        * page ref count when collapsing a page. We don't allow a collapse page
+        * if we have gup taken on the page. We can ensure that by sending IPI
+        * because gup walk happens with IRQ disabled.
+        */


The comment for hash__pmdp_collapse_flush() is a bit more involved:

	/*
	 * Wait for all pending hash_page to finish. This is needed
	 * in case of subpage collapse. When we collapse normal pages
	 * to hugepage, we first clear the pmd, then invalidate all
	 * the PTE entries. The assumption here is that any low level
	 * page fault will see a none pmd and take the slow path that
	 * will wait on mmap_lock. But we could very well be in a
	 * hash_page with local ptep pointer value. Such a hash page
	 * can result in adding new HPTE entries for normal subpages.
	 * That means we could be modifying the page content as we
	 * copy them to a huge page. So wait for parallel hash_page
	 * to finish before invalidating HPTE entries. We can do this
	 * by sending an IPI to all the cpus and executing a dummy
	 * function there.
	 */

I'm not sure if that implies that the IPI is needed for some other hash-magic.

Maybe Aneesh can clarify.

>>
>> This also reminded me that the s390 version of pmdp_collapse_flush() is a
>> bit weird, since it doesn't even have the tlb flush there.  I feel like
>> it's broken but I can't really tell whether something I've overlooked.
>> Worth an eye on.
> 
> I don't know why. But if s390 doesn't flush tlb in
> pmdp_collapse_flush(), then there may be data integrity problem since
> the page is still writable when copying the data because pte is
> cleared after data copying. Or s390 hardware does flush tlb
> automatically?

s390x does a pmdp_huge_get_and_clear().

pmdp_huge_get_and_clear() does an pmdp_xchg_direct().

pmdp_xchg_direct() does an pmdp_flush_direct().

pmdp_flush_direct() issues an IDTE, which is a TLB flush.


Note that this matches ptep_get_and_clear() behavior on s390x. Quoting the comment in there:


/*
 * This is hard to understand. ptep_get_and_clear and ptep_clear_flush
 * both clear the TLB for the unmapped pte. The reason is that
 * ptep_get_and_clear is used in common code (e.g. change_pte_range)
 * to modify an active pte. The sequence is
 *   1) ptep_get_and_clear
 *   2) set_pte_at
 *   3) flush_tlb_range
 * On s390 the tlb needs to get flushed with the modification of the pte
 * if the pte is active. The only way how this can be implemented is to
 * have ptep_get_and_clear do the tlb flush. In exchange flush_tlb_range
 * is a nop.
 */

-- 
Thanks,

David / dhildenb