linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH 08/17] mm: madvise MADV

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Date:	Tue, 7 Oct 2014 11:46:04 +0100
From:	"Dr. David Alan Gilbert" <dgilbert@...hat.com>
To:	"Kirill A. Shutemov" <kirill@...temov.name>
Cc:	Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@...hat.com>, qemu-devel@...gnu.org,
	kvm@...r.kernel.org, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
	linux-mm@...ck.org, linux-api@...r.kernel.org,
	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>,
	Andres Lagar-Cavilla <andreslc@...gle.com>,
	Dave Hansen <dave@...1.net>,
	Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@...hat.com>,
	Rik van Riel <riel@...hat.com>, Mel Gorman <mgorman@...e.de>,
	Andy Lutomirski <luto@...capital.net>,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
	Sasha Levin <sasha.levin@...cle.com>,
	Hugh Dickins <hughd@...gle.com>,
	Peter Feiner <pfeiner@...gle.com>,
	"\\\"Dr. David Alan Gilbert\\\"" <dgilbert@...hat.com>,
	Christopher Covington <cov@...eaurora.org>,
	Johannes Weiner <hannes@...xchg.org>,
	Android Kernel Team <kernel-team@...roid.com>,
	Robert Love <rlove@...gle.com>,
	Dmitry Adamushko <dmitry.adamushko@...il.com>,
	Neil Brown <neilb@...e.de>, Mike Hommey <mh@...ndium.org>,
	Taras Glek <tglek@...illa.com>, Jan Kara <jack@...e.cz>,
	KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@...il.com>,
	Michel Lespinasse <walken@...gle.com>,
	Minchan Kim <minchan@...nel.org>,
	Keith Packard <keithp@...thp.com>,
	"Huangpeng (Peter)" <peter.huangpeng@...wei.com>,
	Isaku Yamahata <yamahata@...inux.co.jp>,
	Anthony Liguori <anthony@...emonkey.ws>,
	Stefan Hajnoczi <stefanha@...il.com>,
	Wenchao Xia <wenchaoqemu@...il.com>,
	Andrew Jones <drjones@...hat.com>,
	Juan Quintela <quintela@...hat.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 08/17] mm: madvise MADV_USERFAULT

* Kirill A. Shutemov (kirill@...temov.name) wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 03, 2014 at 07:07:58PM +0200, Andrea Arcangeli wrote:
> > MADV_USERFAULT is a new madvise flag that will set VM_USERFAULT in the
> > vma flags. Whenever VM_USERFAULT is set in an anonymous vma, if
> > userland touches a still unmapped virtual address, a sigbus signal is
> > sent instead of allocating a new page. The sigbus signal handler will
> > then resolve the page fault in userland by calling the
> > remap_anon_pages syscall.
> 
> Hm. I wounder if this functionality really fits madvise(2) interface: as
> far as I understand it, it provides a way to give a *hint* to kernel which
> may or may not trigger an action from kernel side. I don't think an
> application will behaive reasonably if kernel ignore the *advise* and will
> not send SIGBUS, but allocate memory.

Aren't DONTNEED and DONTDUMP  similar cases of madvise operations that are
expected to do what they say ?

> I would suggest to consider to use some other interface for the
> functionality: a new syscall or, perhaps, mprotect().

Dave

> -- 
>  Kirill A. Shutemov
--
Dr. David Alan Gilbert / dgilbert@...hat.com / Manchester, UK
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