Re: [PATCH 1/1] mm: handle swap page faults if the faulting page can be locked

[Alistair Popple]

Matthew Wilcox <willy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

> On Fri, Apr 14, 2023 at 11:00:43AM -0700, Suren Baghdasaryan wrote:
>> When page fault is handled under VMA lock protection, all swap page
>> faults are retried with mmap_lock because folio_lock_or_retry
>> implementation has to drop and reacquire mmap_lock if folio could
>> not be immediately locked.
>> Instead of retrying all swapped page faults, retry only when folio
>> locking fails.
>
> Reviewed-by: Matthew Wilcox (Oracle) <willy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>
> Let's just review what can now be handled under the VMA lock instead of
> the mmap_lock, in case somebody knows better than me that it's not safe.
>
>  - We can call migration_entry_wait().  This will wait for PG_locked to
>    become clear (in migration_entry_wait_on_locked()).  As previously
>    discussed offline, I think this is safe to do while holding the VMA
>    locked.

Do we even need to be holding the VMA locked while in
migration_entry_wait()? My understanding is we're just waiting for
PG_locked to be cleared so we can return with a reasonable chance the
migration entry is gone. If for example it has been unmapped or
protections downgraded we will simply refault.

>  - We can call remove_device_exclusive_entry().  That calls
>    folio_lock_or_retry(), which will fail if it can't get the VMA lock.

Looks ok to me.

>  - We can call pgmap->ops->migrate_to_ram().  Perhaps somebody familiar
>    with Nouveau and amdkfd could comment on how safe this is?

Currently this won't work because drives assume mmap_lock is held during
pgmap->ops->migrate_to_ram(). Primarily this is because
migrate_vma_setup()/migrate_vma_pages() is used to handle the fault and
that asserts mmap_lock is taken in walk_page_range() and also
migrate_vma_insert_page().

So I don't think we can call that case without mmap_lock.

At a glance it seems it should be relatively easy to move to using
lock_vma_under_rcu(). Drivers will need updating as well though because
migrate_vma_setup() is called outside of fault handling paths so drivers
will currently take mmap_lock rather than vma lock when looking up the
vma. See for example nouveau_svmm_bind().

>  - I believe we can't call handle_pte_marker() because we exclude UFFD
>    VMAs earlier.
>  - We can call swap_readpage() if we allocate a new folio.  I haven't
>    traced through all this code to tell if it's OK.
>
> So ... I believe this is all OK, but we're definitely now willing to
> wait for I/O from the swap device while holding the VMA lock when we
> weren't before.  And maybe we should make a bigger deal of it in the
> changelog.
>
> And maybe we shouldn't just be failing the folio_lock_or_retry(),
> maybe we should be waiting for the folio lock with the VMA locked.