linux-ext4 - Re: [PATCH v2 10/18] fsdax: Manage pgmap references at entry insertion and deletion

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Date:   Thu, 22 Sep 2022 14:55:57 -0300
From:   Jason Gunthorpe <jgg@...dia.com>
To:     Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@...el.com>
Cc:     akpm@...ux-foundation.org, Matthew Wilcox <willy@...radead.org>,
        Jan Kara <jack@...e.cz>, "Darrick J. Wong" <djwong@...nel.org>,
        Christoph Hellwig <hch@....de>,
        John Hubbard <jhubbard@...dia.com>,
        linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org, nvdimm@...ts.linux.dev,
        linux-xfs@...r.kernel.org, linux-mm@...ck.org,
        linux-ext4@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH v2 10/18] fsdax: Manage pgmap references at entry
 insertion and deletion

On Wed, Sep 21, 2022 at 07:17:40PM -0700, Dan Williams wrote:
> Jason Gunthorpe wrote:
> > On Wed, Sep 21, 2022 at 05:14:34PM -0700, Dan Williams wrote:
> > 
> > > > Indeed, you could reasonably put such a liveness test at the moment
> > > > every driver takes a 0 refcount struct page and turns it into a 1
> > > > refcount struct page.
> > > 
> > > I could do it with a flag, but the reason to have pgmap->ref managed at
> > > the page->_refcount 0 -> 1 and 1 -> 0 transitions is so at the end of
> > > time memunmap_pages() can look at the one counter rather than scanning
> > > and rescanning all the pages to see when they go to final idle.
> > 
> > That makes some sense too, but the logical way to do that is to put some
> > counter along the page_free() path, and establish a 'make a page not
> > free' path that does the other side.
> > 
> > ie it should not be in DAX code, it should be all in common pgmap
> > code. The pgmap should never be freed while any page->refcount != 0
> > and that should be an intrinsic property of pgmap, not relying on
> > external parties.
> 
> I just do not know where to put such intrinsics since there is nothing
> today that requires going through the pgmap object to discover the pfn
> and 'allocate' the page.

I think that is just a new API that wrappers the set refcount = 1,
percpu refcount and maybe building appropriate compound pages too.

Eg maybe something like:

  struct folio *pgmap_alloc_folios(pgmap, start, length)

And you get back maximally sized allocated folios with refcount = 1
that span the requested range.

> In other words make dax_direct_access() the 'allocation' event that pins
> the pgmap? I might be speaking a foreign language if you're not familiar
> with the relationship of 'struct dax_device' to 'struct dev_pagemap'
> instances. This is not the first time I have considered making them one
> in the same.

I don't know enough about dax, so yes very foreign :)

I'm thinking broadly about how to make pgmap usable to all the other
drivers in a safe and robust way that makes some kind of logical sense.

Jason