Re: [PATCH 1/2] fs/proc/task_mmu: add guard region bit to pagemap

[Lorenzo Stoakes]

+cc Greg for stable question

On Wed, Mar 19, 2025 at 11:22:40AM -0700, Andrei Vagin wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 24, 2025 at 2:39 AM David Hildenbrand <david@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> > On 24.02.25 11:18, Lorenzo Stoakes wrote:

[snip]
> > >>
> > >> Acked-by: David Hildenbrand <david@xxxxxxxxxx>
> > >
> > > Thanks! :)
> > >>
> > >> Something that might be interesting is also extending the PAGEMAP_SCAN
> > >> ioctl.
> > >
> > > Yeah, funny you should mention that, I did see that, but on reading the man
> > > page it struck me that it requires the region to be uffd afaict? All the
> > > tests seem to establish uffd, and the man page implies it:
> > >
> > >         To start tracking the written state (flag) of a page or range of
> > >         memory, the UFFD_FEATURE_WP_ASYNC must be enabled by UFFDIO_API
> > >         ioctl(2) on userfaultfd and memory range must be registered with
> > >         UFFDIO_REGISTER ioctl(2) in UFFDIO_REGISTER_MODE_WP mode.
> > >
> > > It would be a bit of a weird edge case to add support there. I was excited
> > > when I first saw this ioctl, then disappointed afterwards... but maybe I
> > > got it wrong?
>
> > >
> >
> > I never managed to review that fully, but I thing that
> > UFFD_FEATURE_WP_ASYNC thingy is only required for PM_SCAN_CHECK_WPASYNC
> > and PM_SCAN_WP_MATCHING.
> >
> > See pagemap_scan_test_walk().
> >
> > I do recall that it works on any VMA.
> >
> > Ah yes, tools/testing/selftests/mm/vm_util.c ends up using it for
> > pagemap_is_swapped() and friends via page_entry_is() to sanity check
> > that what pagemap gives us is consistent with what pagemap_scan gives us.
> >
> > So it should work independent of the uffd magic.
> > I might be wrong, though ...
>
>
> PAGEMAP_SCAN can work without the UFFD magic. CRIU utilizes PAGEMAP_SCAN
> as a more efficient alternative to /proc/pid/pagemap:
> https://github.com/checkpoint-restore/criu/blob/d18912fc88f3dc7bde5fdfa3575691977eb21753/criu/pagemap-cache.c#L178
>

Yeah we ascertained that - is on my list, LSF coming up next week means we
aren't great on timing here, but I'll prioritise this. When I'm back.

> For CRIU, obtaining information about guard regions is critical.
> Without this functionality in the kernel, CRIU is broken. We probably should
> consider backporting these changes to the 6.13 and 6.14 stable branches.
>

I'm not sure on precedent for backporting a feature like this - Greg? Am
happy to do it though.

As a stop gap we can backport the pagemap feature if Greg feels this is
appropriate?

[snip]

> > My thinking was, that if you have a large VMA, with ordinary pagemap you
> > have to copy 8byte per entry (and have room for that somewhere in user
> > space). In theory, with the scanning feature, you can leave that ...
> > scanning to the kernel and don't have to do any copying/allocate space
> > for it in user space etc.
>
> PAGEMAP_SCAN doesn't have this issue and it was one of the reasons to
> implement it.

Ack.

>
> Thanks,
> Andrei