linux-kernel - Re: [PATCHv2 1/3] x86/mm: Provide pmdp

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Date:   Mon, 19 Jun 2017 10:11:35 -0700
From:   Nadav Amit <nadav.amit@...il.com>
To:     "Kirill A. Shutemov" <kirill.shutemov@...ux.intel.com>
Cc:     Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
        Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@...e.cz>,
        Vineet Gupta <vgupta@...opsys.com>,
        Russell King <linux@...linux.org.uk>,
        Will Deacon <will.deacon@....com>,
        Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@....com>,
        Ralf Baechle <ralf@...ux-mips.org>,
        "David S. Miller" <davem@...emloft.net>,
        "Aneesh Kumar K . V" <aneesh.kumar@...ux.vnet.ibm.com>,
        Martin Schwidefsky <schwidefsky@...ibm.com>,
        Heiko Carstens <heiko.carstens@...ibm.com>,
        Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@...hat.com>,
        linux-arch@...r.kernel.org, linux-mm@...ck.org,
        linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, Ingo Molnar <mingo@...nel.org>,
        "H . Peter Anvin" <hpa@...or.com>,
        Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>
Subject: Re: [PATCHv2 1/3] x86/mm: Provide pmdp_establish() helper

Kirill A. Shutemov <kirill.shutemov@...ux.intel.com> wrote:

> We need an atomic way to setup pmd page table entry, avoiding races with
> CPU setting dirty/accessed bits. This is required to implement
> pmdp_invalidate() that doesn't loose these bits.
> 
> On PAE we have to use cmpxchg8b as we cannot assume what is value of new pmd and
> setting it up half-by-half can expose broken corrupted entry to CPU.

...

> 
> +#ifndef pmdp_establish
> +#define pmdp_establish pmdp_establish
> +static inline pmd_t pmdp_establish(pmd_t *pmdp, pmd_t pmd)
> +{
> +	if (IS_ENABLED(CONFIG_SMP)) {
> +		return xchg(pmdp, pmd);
> +	} else {
> +		pmd_t old = *pmdp;
> +		*pmdp = pmd;

I think you may want to use WRITE_ONCE() here - otherwise nobody guarantees
that the compiler will not split writes to *pmdp. Although the kernel uses
similar code to setting PTEs and PMDs, I think that it is best to start
fixing it. Obviously, you might need a different code path for 32-bit
kernels.

Regards,
Nadav