Re: [RFC PATCH 3/3] mm/migrate: Create move_phys_pages syscall

From: Jonathan Corbet
Date: Sun Sep 10 2023 - 16:41:04 EST


Gregory Price <gourry.memverge@xxxxxxxxx> writes:

> Similar to the move_pages system call, instead of taking a pid and
> list of virtual addresses, this system call takes a list of physical
> addresses.
>
> Because there is no task to validate the memory policy against, each
> page needs to be interrogated to determine whether the migration is
> valid, and all tasks that map it need to be interrogated.
>
> This is accomplished via an rmap_walk on the folio containing
> the page, and interrogating all tasks that map the page.
>
> Each page must be interrogated individually, which should be
> considered when using this to migrate shared regions.
>
> The remaining logic is the same as the move_pages syscall. One
> change to do_pages_move is made (to check whether an mm_struct is
> passed) in order to re-use the existing migration code.
>
> Signed-off-by: Gregory Price <gregory.price@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> ---
> arch/x86/entry/syscalls/syscall_32.tbl | 1 +
> arch/x86/entry/syscalls/syscall_64.tbl | 1 +
> include/linux/syscalls.h | 5 +
> include/uapi/asm-generic/unistd.h | 8 +-
> kernel/sys_ni.c | 1 +
> mm/migrate.c | 178 +++++++++++++++++++++++-
> tools/include/uapi/asm-generic/unistd.h | 8 +-
> 7 files changed, 197 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-)

So this is probably a silly question, but just to be sure ... what is
the permission model for this system call? As far as I can tell, the
ability to move pages is entirely unrestricted, with the exception of
pages that would need MPOL_MF_MOVE_ALL. If so, that seems undesirable,
but probably I'm just missing something ... ?

Thanks,

jon