linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH 1/3] Fix COW D-cache aliasing on fork

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Message-Id: <20061020.122311.30184576.davem@davemloft.net>
Date:	Fri, 20 Oct 2006 12:23:11 -0700 (PDT)
From:	David Miller <davem@...emloft.net>
To:	nickpiggin@...oo.com.au
Cc:	ralf@...ux-mips.org, torvalds@...l.org, akpm@...l.org,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, anemo@....ocn.ne.jp
Subject: Re: [PATCH 1/3] Fix COW D-cache aliasing on fork

From: Nick Piggin <nickpiggin@...oo.com.au>
Date: Sat, 21 Oct 2006 00:39:40 +1000

> So moving the flush_cache_mm below the copy_page_range, to just
> before the flush_tlb_mm, would work then? This would make the
> race much smaller than with this patchset.
> 
> But doesn't that still leave a race?
> 
> What if another thread writes to cache after we have flushed it
> but before flushing the TLBs? Although we've marked the the ptes
> readonly, the CPU won't trap if the TLB is valid? There must be
> some special way for the arch to handle this, but I can't see it.

Also, it is actually the case that doing page-by-page cache flushes
can be cheaper than flush_mm_cache() on certain cpus.  Very few cpus
that need this cache flushing provide a "context" based cache flush.

On cpus like the mentioned hypersparc, there is no way to do a
"context" flush of the cache, so we flush the entire multi-megabyte L2
cache.  Actually, it allows to flush only "user" cache lines which
keeps the kernel cache lines in there, but still it's very expensive.
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