linux-kernel - Re: [patch 2/6] mmu_notifier: Callbacks to invalidate address ranges

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Date:	Wed, 30 Jan 2008 08:43:06 -0600
From:	Jack Steiner <steiner@....com>
To:	Andrea Arcangeli <andrea@...ranet.com>
Cc:	Christoph Lameter <clameter@....com>, Robin Holt <holt@....com>,
	Avi Kivity <avi@...ranet.com>, Izik Eidus <izike@...ranet.com>,
	Nick Piggin <npiggin@...e.de>, kvm-devel@...ts.sourceforge.net,
	Benjamin Herrenschmidt <benh@...nel.crashing.org>,
	Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@...llo.nl>,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, linux-mm@...ck.org,
	daniel.blueman@...drics.com, Hugh Dickins <hugh@...itas.com>
Subject: Re: [patch 2/6] mmu_notifier: Callbacks to invalidate address ranges

On Wed, Jan 30, 2008 at 02:37:20PM +0100, Andrea Arcangeli wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 29, 2008 at 06:28:05PM -0600, Jack Steiner wrote:
> > On Tue, Jan 29, 2008 at 04:20:50PM -0800, Christoph Lameter wrote:
> > > On Wed, 30 Jan 2008, Andrea Arcangeli wrote:
> > > 
> > > > > invalidate_range after populate allows access to memory for which ptes 
> > > > > were zapped and the refcount was released.
> > > > 
> > > > The last refcount is released by the invalidate_range itself.
> > > 
> > > That is true for your implementation and to address Robin's issues. Jack: 
> > > Is that true for the GRU?
> > 
> > I'm not sure I understand the question. The GRU never (currently) takes
> > a reference on a page. It has no mechanism for tracking pages that
> > were exported to the external TLBs.
> 
> If you don't have a pin, then things like invalidate_range in
> remap_file_pages can't be safe as writes through the external TLBs can
> keep going on pages in the freelist. For you to be safe w/o a
> page-pin, you need to return in the direction of invalidate_page
> inside ptep_clear_flush (or anyway before
> page_cache_release/__free_page/put_page...). You're generally not safe
> with any invalidate_range that may run after the page pointed by the
> pte has been freed (or can be freed by the VM anytime because of being
> unpinned cache).

Yuck....

I see what you mean. I need to review to mail to see why this changed
but in the original discussions with Christoph, the invalidate_range
callouts were suppose to be made BEFORE the pages were put on the freelist.


--- jack
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