Re: [RFC PATCH] mm/mbind: Introduce process_mbind() syscall for external memory binding

[Zhongkun He]

>
> Hi ZhongKun!
>
> I actually just sent out a more general RFC to mempolicy updates that
> discuss this more completely:
>
> https://lore.kernel.org/linux-mm/ZWezcQk+BYEq%2FWiI@xxxxxxxxxxxx/
>

OK.

> and another post on even more issues with pidfd modifications to vma
> mempolicies:
>
> https://lore.kernel.org/linux-mm/ZWYsth2CtC4Ilvoz@xxxxxxxxxxxx/
>
> We may have to slow-walk the changes to vma policies due to there being
> many more hidden accesses to (current) than expected. It's a rather
> nasty rats nest of mempolicy-vma-cpusets-shmem callbacks that obscure
> these current-task accesses, it will take time to work through.
>

Got it, thanks. It's more complicated than I thought.

> As for hot-path reference counting - we may need to change the way
> mempolicy is managed, possibly we could leverage RCU to manage mempolicy
> references in the hot path, rather than using locks.  In this scenario,
> we would likely need to change the way the default policy is applied
> (maybe not, I haven't fully explored it).
>

RCU may have a long time in the read-side critical section.

We should probably replace the atomic_t refcnt with percpu_ref in
mempolicy(also suggested by Michal), but refactoring work involves
a lot of code.

A simple way is to use task_work to release the mempolicy which may
be used by alloc_pages(). But it doesn't have a direct result.

> Do you have thoughts on this?  Would very much like additional comments
> before I go through the refactor work.
>
> Regards,
> Gregory