Date:   Wed, 12 Dec 2018 12:02:20 -0500
From:   Jerome Glisse <jglisse@...hat.com>
To:     Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@...el.com>
Cc:     Jan Kara <jack@...e.cz>, John Hubbard <jhubbard@...dia.com>,
        Matthew Wilcox <willy@...radead.org>,
        John Hubbard <john.hubbard@...il.com>,
        Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
        Linux MM <linux-mm@...ck.org>, tom@...pey.com,
        Al Viro <viro@...iv.linux.org.uk>, benve@...co.com,
        Christoph Hellwig <hch@...radead.org>,
        Christopher Lameter <cl@...ux.com>,
        "Dalessandro, Dennis" <dennis.dalessandro@...el.com>,
        Doug Ledford <dledford@...hat.com>,
        Jason Gunthorpe <jgg@...pe.ca>,
        Michal Hocko <mhocko@...nel.org>,
        Mike Marciniszyn <mike.marciniszyn@...el.com>,
        rcampbell@...dia.com,
        Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
        linux-fsdevel <linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 1/2] mm: introduce put_user_page*(), placeholder versions

On Wed, Dec 12, 2018 at 08:27:35AM -0800, Dan Williams wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 12, 2018 at 7:03 AM Jerome Glisse <jglisse@...hat.com> wrote:
> >
> > On Mon, Dec 10, 2018 at 11:28:46AM +0100, Jan Kara wrote:
> > > On Fri 07-12-18 21:24:46, Jerome Glisse wrote:
> > > > Another crazy idea, why not treating GUP as another mapping of the page
> > > > and caller of GUP would have to provide either a fake anon_vma struct or
> > > > a fake vma struct (or both for PRIVATE mapping of a file where you can
> > > > have a mix of both private and file page thus only if it is a read only
> > > > GUP) that would get added to the list of existing mapping.
> > > >
> > > > So the flow would be:
> > > >     somefunction_thatuse_gup()
> > > >     {
> > > >         ...
> > > >         GUP(_fast)(vma, ..., fake_anon, fake_vma);
> > > >         ...
> > > >     }
> > > >
> > > >     GUP(vma, ..., fake_anon, fake_vma)
> > > >     {
> > > >         if (vma->flags == ANON) {
> > > >             // Add the fake anon vma to the anon vma chain as a child
> > > >             // of current vma
> > > >         } else {
> > > >             // Add the fake vma to the mapping tree
> > > >         }
> > > >
> > > >         // The existing GUP except that now it inc mapcount and not
> > > >         // refcount
> > > >         GUP_old(..., &nanonymous, &nfiles);
> > > >
> > > >         atomic_add(&fake_anon->refcount, nanonymous);
> > > >         atomic_add(&fake_vma->refcount, nfiles);
> > > >
> > > >         return nanonymous + nfiles;
> > > >     }
> > >
> > > Thanks for your idea! This is actually something like I was suggesting back
> > > at LSF/MM in Deer Valley. There were two downsides to this I remember
> > > people pointing out:
> > >
> > > 1) This cannot really work with __get_user_pages_fast(). You're not allowed
> > > to get necessary locks to insert new entry into the VMA tree in that
> > > context. So essentially we'd loose get_user_pages_fast() functionality.
> > >
> > > 2) The overhead e.g. for direct IO may be noticeable. You need to allocate
> > > the fake tracking VMA, get VMA interval tree lock, insert into the tree.
> > > Then on IO completion you need to queue work to unpin the pages again as you
> > > cannot remove the fake VMA directly from interrupt context where the IO is
> > > completed.
> > >
> > > You are right that the cost could be amortized if gup() is called for
> > > multiple consecutive pages however for small IOs there's no help...
> > >
> > > So this approach doesn't look like a win to me over using counter in struct
> > > page and I'd rather try looking into squeezing HMM public page usage of
> > > struct page so that we can fit that gup counter there as well. I know that
> > > it may be easier said than done...
> >
> > So i want back to the drawing board and first i would like to ascertain
> > that we all agree on what the objectives are:
> >
> >     [O1] Avoid write back from a page still being written by either a
> >          device or some direct I/O or any other existing user of GUP.
> >          This would avoid possible file system corruption.
> >
> >     [O2] Avoid crash when set_page_dirty() is call on a page that is
> >          considered clean by core mm (buffer head have been remove and
> >          with some file system this turns into an ugly mess).
> >
> >     [O3] DAX and the device block problems, ie with DAX the page map in
> >          userspace is the same as the block (persistent memory) and no
> >          filesystem nor block device understand page as block or pinned
> >          block.
> >
> > For [O3] i don't think any pin count would help in anyway. I believe
> > that the current long term GUP API that does not allow GUP of DAX is
> > the only sane solution for now.
> 
> No, that's not a sane solution, it's an emergency hack.

Then how do you want to solve it ? Knowing pin count does not help
you, at least i do not see how that would help and if it does then
my solution allow you to know pin count it is the difference between
real mapping and mapcount value.


> > The real fix would be to teach file-
> > system about DAX/pinned block so that a pinned block is not reuse
> > by filesystem.
> 
> We already have taught filesystems about pinned dax pages, see
> dax_layout_busy_page(). As much as possible I want to eliminate the
> concept of "dax pages" as a special case that gets sprinkled
> throughout the mm.
> 
> > For [O1] and [O2] i believe a solution with mapcount would work. So
> > no new struct, no fake vma, nothing like that. In GUP for file back
> > pages
> 
> With get_user_pages_fast() we don't know that we have a file-backed
> page, because we don't have a vma.

You do not need a vma to know that we have PageAnon() for that so my
solution is just about adding to core GUP page table walker:

    if (!PageAnon(page))
        atomic_inc(&page->mapcount);


Then in put_user_page() you add the opposite. In page_mkclean() you
count the number of real mapping and voilà ... you got an answer for
[O1]. You could use the same count real mapping to get the pin count
in other place that cares about it but i fails to see why the actual
pin count value would matter to any one.

Cheers,
Jérôme

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