Re: [PATCHv2 1/2] mm/memory: Do not populate page table entries beyond i_size

[Hugh Dickins]

On Mon, 27 Oct 2025, David Hildenbrand wrote:
...
> 
> Just so we are on the same page: this is not about which folio sizes we
> allocate (like what Baolin fixed) but what/how much to map.
> 
> I guess this patch here would imply the following changes
> 
> 1) A file with a size that is not PMD aligned will have the last (unaligned
> part) not mapped by PMDs.
> 
> 2) Once growing a file, the previously-last-part would not be mapped by PMDs.

Yes, the v2 patch was so, and the v3 patch fixes it.

khugepaged might have fixed it up later on, I suppose.

Hmm, does hpage_collapse_scan_file() or collapse_pte_mapped_thp()
want a modification, to prevent reinserting a PMD after a failed
non-shmem truncation folio_split?  And collapse_file() after a
successful non-shmem truncation folio_split?

Conversely, shouldn't MADV_COLLAPSE be happy to give you a PMD
if the map size permits, even when spanning EOF?

> 
> Of course, we would have only mapped the last part of the file by PMDs if the
> VMA would have been large enough in the first place. I'm curious, is that
> something that is commonly done by applications with shmem files (map beyond
> eof)?

Setting aside the very common case of mapping a fraction of PAGE_SIZE
beyond EOF...

I do not know whether it's common to map a >= PAGE_SIZE fraction of
HPAGE_PMD_SIZE beyond EOF, but it has often been sensible to do so.
For example, imagine (using x86_64 numbers) a 4MiB map of a 3MiB
file on huge tmpfs, requiring two TLB entries for the whole file.

Hugh