Re: [RFC PATCH 0/5] mm: sub-folio dirty tracking for PTE-mapped mmap writes

[Kiryl Shutsemau]

On Thu, Sep 03, 2026 at 08:55:36PM +0100, Pedro Falcato wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 03, 2026 at 07:29:38PM +0100, Kiryl Shutsemau wrote:
> > Narrowing the dirtying at page_mkwrite() time does not work on its own:
> > set_pte_range() batch-maps a whole folio writable on the first shared
> > write fault, so the stores that follow never fault and never reach the
> > filesystem.
> 
> Help me out here: in which case does this happen? page fault handling is a
> mess... I think page_mkwrite is always called, no? in do_shared_fault().

It is always called, but once per folio, not once per page. It is the
filesystem's chance to preallocate whatever it needs to track dirty
state for the *folio*.

Later finish_fault() maps the folio. It tries to map it fully when it
can, so a write fault creates up to 512 writable PTEs on x86. And we
really do need to map the folio fully whenever we can. Otherwise we
significantly undercount mlocked memory. See commit 19773df031bc
("mm/fault: try to map the entire file folio in finish_fault()").

And once the whole folio is mapped with writable PTEs we cannot narrow
the dirtying to a subset of pages. Any of them can turn dirty at any
time, with nothing to record it.

-- 
  Kiryl Shutsemau / Kirill A. Shutemov