linux-kernel - Re: missing madvise functionality

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Date:	Wed, 04 Apr 2007 19:45:40 +1000
From:	Nick Piggin <nickpiggin@...oo.com.au>
To:	Eric Dumazet <dada1@...mosbay.com>
CC:	Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@...llo.nl>,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
	Jakub Jelinek <jakub@...hat.com>,
	Ulrich Drepper <drepper@...hat.com>,
	Andi Kleen <andi@...stfloor.org>,
	Rik van Riel <riel@...hat.com>,
	Linux Kernel <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	linux-mm@...ck.org, Hugh Dickins <hugh@...itas.com>
Subject: Re: missing madvise functionality

Eric Dumazet wrote:
> On Wed, 04 Apr 2007 18:55:18 +1000
> Nick Piggin <nickpiggin@...oo.com.au> wrote:
> 
> 
>>Peter Zijlstra wrote:
>>
>>>On Wed, 2007-04-04 at 12:22 +1000, Nick Piggin wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>Eric Dumazet wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>>I do think such workloads might benefit from a vma_cache not shared by 
>>>>>all threads but private to each thread. A sequence could invalidate the 
>>>>>cache(s).
>>>>>
>>>>>ie instead of a mm->mmap_cache, having a mm->sequence, and each thread 
>>>>>having a current->mmap_cache and current->mm_sequence
>>>>
>>>>I have a patchset to do exactly this, btw.
>>>
>>>
>>>/me too
>>>
>>>However, I decided against pushing it because when it does happen that a
>>>task is not involved with a vma lookup for longer than it takes the seq
>>>count to wrap we have a stale pointer...
>>>
>>>We could go and walk the tasks once in a while to reset the pointer, but
>>>it all got a tad involved.
>>
>>Well here is my core patch (against I think 2.6.16 + a set of vma cache
>>cleanups and abstractions). I didn't think the wrapping aspect was
>>terribly involved.
> 
> 
> Well, I believe this one is too expensive. I was thinking of a light one :
> 
> I am not deleting mmap_sem, but adding a sequence number to mm_struct, that is incremented each time a vma is added/deleted, not each time mmap_sem is taken (read or write)

That's exactly what mine does (except IIRC it doesn't invalidate when
you add a vma).


> Each thread has its own copy of the sequence, taken at the time find_vma() had to do a full lookup.
> 
> I believe some optimized paths could call check_vma_cache() without mmap_sem read lock taken, and if it fails, take the mmap_sem lock and do the slow path.

The mmap_sem for read does not only protect the mm_rb rbtree structure, but
the vmas themselves as well as their page tables, so you can't do that.

You could do it if you had a lock-per-vma to synchronise against write
operations, and rcu-freed vmas or some such... but I don't think we should
go down a road like that until we first remove mmap_sem from low hanging
things (like private futexes!) and then see who's complaining.

-- 
SUSE Labs, Novell Inc.
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