Date:	Mon, 16 May 2011 00:18:25 +0200 (CEST)
From:	Mikulas Patocka <mikulas@...ax.karlin.mff.cuni.cz>
To:	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>
cc:	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, linux-parisc@...r.kernel.org,
	linux-ia64@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] Don't mlock guardpage if the stack is growing up

On Tue, 10 May 2011, Mikulas Patocka wrote:

> On Mon, 9 May 2011, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> 
> > On Mon, May 9, 2011 at 8:57 AM, Linus Torvalds
> > <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org> wrote:
> > >
> > > Hmm. One thing that strikes me is this problem also implies that the
> > > /proc/self/maps file is wrong for the GROWSUP case, isn't it?
> > >
> > > So I think we should not just apply your lock fix, but then *also*
> > > apply something like this:
> > 
> > Actually, I think we might be better off with something like this.
> > 
> > It makes a few more changes:
> > 
> >  - move the stack guard page checking in __get_user_pages() into the
> > rare case (ie we didn't find a page), since that's the only case we
> > care about (the thing about the guard page is that don't want to call
> > "handle_mm_fault()"). As a result, it's off any path where we can
> > possibly care about performance, so we might as well have a nice
> > helper function for both the grow-up and grow-down cases, instead of
> > trying to be clever and only look at the grow-down case for the first
> > page in the vma like you did in your patch.
> > 
> >    End result: simpler, more straightforward code.
> > 
> >  - Move the growsup/down helper functions to <linux/mm.h>, since the
> > /proc code really wants to use them too. That means that the
> > "vma_stack_continue()" function (which now got split up into two
> > cases, for the up/down cases) is now entirely just an internal helper
> > function - nobody else uses it, and the real interface are the
> > "stack_guard_page_xyz()"  functions. Renamed to be simpler.
> > 
> >  - changed that naming of those stack_guard_page functions to use
> > _start and _end instead of growsup/growsdown, since it actually takes
> > the start or the end of the page as the argument (to match the
> > semantics of the afore-mentioned helpers)
> > 
> >  - and finally, make /proc/<pid>/maps use these helpers for both the
> > up/down case, so now /proc/self/maps should work well for the growsup
> > case too.
> > 
> > Hmm?
> > 
> > The only oddish case is IA64 that actually has a stack that grows
> > *both* up and down. That means that I could make up a stack mapping
> > that has a single virtual page in it, that is both the start *and* the
> > end page. Now /proc/self/maps would actually show such a mapping with
> > "negative" size. That's interesting.
> > 
> > It would be easy enough to have a "if (end < start) end = start" there
> > for that case, but maybe it's actually interesting information.
> > 
> > Regardless, I'd like to hear whether this patch really does work on
> > PA-RISC and especially IA64. I think those are the only cases that
> > have a GROWSUP stack. And the IA64 case that supports both is the most
> > interesting, everybody else does just one or the other.
> > 
> >                     Linus
> 
> I will test it after a week, now I'm traveling away.
> 
> Mikulas

Hi

I tested 2.6.39-rc7 in on PA-RISC and confirm that it works.

Mikulas
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