linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH 19/21] userfaultfd: remap_pages: UFFDIO

lists.openwall.net		lists / announce owl-users owl-dev john-users john-dev passwdqc-users yescrypt popa3d-users / oss-security kernel-hardening musl sabotage tlsify passwords / crypt-dev xvendor / Bugtraq Full-Disclosure linux-kernel linux-netdev linux-ext4 linux-hardening linux-cve-announce PHC
Open Source and information security mailing list archives

Hash Suite: Windows password security audit tool. GUI, reports in PDF.

[<prev] [next>] [<thread-prev] [thread-next>] [day] [month] [year] [list]

Date:	Thu, 5 Mar 2015 09:39:48 -0800
From:	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>
To:	Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@...hat.com>
Cc:	qemu-devel@...gnu.org, KVM list <kvm@...r.kernel.org>,
	Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	linux-mm <linux-mm@...ck.org>,
	Linux API <linux-api@...r.kernel.org>,
	Android Kernel Team <kernel-team@...roid.com>,
	"Kirill A. Shutemov" <kirill@...temov.name>,
	Pavel Emelyanov <xemul@...allels.com>,
	Sanidhya Kashyap <sanidhya.gatech@...il.com>,
	zhang.zhanghailiang@...wei.com,
	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>,
	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>,
	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 19/21] userfaultfd: remap_pages: UFFDIO_REMAP preparation

On Thu, Mar 5, 2015 at 9:18 AM, Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@...hat.com> wrote:
> remap_pages is the lowlevel mm helper needed to implement
> UFFDIO_REMAP.

This function is nasty nasty nasty.

Is this really worth it? On real loads? That people are expected to use?

Considering how we just got rid of one special magic VM remapping
thing that nobody actually used, I'd really hate to add a new one.

The fact is, almost nobody ever uses anything that isn't standard
POSIX. There are no apps, and even for specialized things like
virtualization hypervisors this kind of thing is often simply not
worth it.

Quite frankly, *if* we ever merge userfaultfd, I would *strongly*
argue for not merging the remap parts. I just don't see the point. It
doesn't seem to add anything that is semantically very important -
it's *potentially* a faster copy, but even that is

  (a) questionable in the first place

and

 (b) unclear why anybody would ever care about performance of
infrastructure that nobody actually uses today, and future use isn't
even clear or shown to be particualrly performance-sensitive.

So basically I'd like to see better documentation, a few real use
cases (and by real I very much do *not* mean "you can use it for
this", but actual patches to actual projects that matter and that are
expected to care and merge them), and a simplified series that doesn't
do the remap thing.

Because *every* time we add a new clever interface, we end up with
approximately zero users and just pain down the line. Examples:
splice, mremap, yadda yadda.

                        Linus
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@...r.kernel.org
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/