linux-kernel - [PATCH] mm/Kconfig: additional help text for HMM

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, 18 Jul 2019 18:32:53 -0700
From:   john.hubbard@...il.com
To:     pavel@....cz
Cc:     SCheung@...dia.com, akpm@...ux-foundation.org,
        aneesh.kumar@...ux.vnet.ibm.com, benh@...nel.crashing.org,
        bsingharora@...il.com, dan.j.williams@...el.com,
        dnellans@...dia.com, ebaskakov@...dia.com, hannes@...xchg.org,
        jglisse@...hat.com, jhubbard@...dia.com,
        kirill.shutemov@...ux.intel.com, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
        liubo95@...wei.com, mhairgrove@...dia.com, mhocko@...nel.org,
        paulmck@...ux.vnet.ibm.com, ross.zwisler@...ux.intel.com,
        sgutti@...dia.com, torvalds@...ux-foundation.org,
        vdavydov.dev@...il.com, Jason Gunthorpe <jgg@...pe.ca>,
        Christoph Hellwig <hch@...radead.org>
Subject: [PATCH] mm/Kconfig: additional help text for HMM_MIRROR option

From: John Hubbard <jhubbard@...dia.com>

The HMM_MIRROR option in Kconfig is a little underdocumented and
mysterious, and leaves people wondering whether to enable it.

Add text explaining just a little bit more about HMM, and also
mention which hardware would benefit from having HMM_MIRROR
enabled.

Suggested-by: Pavel Machek <pavel@....cz>
Cc: Balbir Singh <bsingharora@...il.com>
Cc: Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@...el.com>
Cc: Jason Gunthorpe <jgg@...pe.ca>
Cc: Jerome Glisse <jglisse@...hat.com>
Cc: Christoph Hellwig <hch@...radead.org>
Signed-off-by: John Hubbard <jhubbard@...dia.com>
---

Hi Pavel and all, does this help? I've tried to capture the key missing bits
of documentation, but still keep it small, for Kconfig.

thanks,
John Hubbard
NVIDIA

 mm/Kconfig | 17 ++++++++++++-----
 1 file changed, 12 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-)

diff --git a/mm/Kconfig b/mm/Kconfig
index 56cec636a1fc..2fcb92e7f696 100644
--- a/mm/Kconfig
+++ b/mm/Kconfig
@@ -681,11 +681,18 @@ config HMM_MIRROR
 	depends on MMU && 64BIT
 	select MMU_NOTIFIER
 	help
-	  Select HMM_MIRROR if you want to mirror range of the CPU page table of a
-	  process into a device page table. Here, mirror means "keep synchronized".
-	  Prerequisites: the device must provide the ability to write-protect its
-	  page tables (at PAGE_SIZE granularity), and must be able to recover from
-	  the resulting potential page faults.
+	  This is Heterogeneous Memory Management (HMM) process address space
+	  mirroring.
+
+	  HMM_MIRROR provides a way to mirror ranges of the CPU page tables
+	  of a process into a device page table. Here, mirror means "keep
+	  synchronized". Prerequisites: the device must provide the ability
+	  to write-protect its page tables (at PAGE_SIZE granularity), and
+	  must be able to recover from the resulting potential page faults.
+
+	  Select HMM_MIRROR if you have hardware that meets the above
+	  description. An early, partial list of such hardware is:
+	  an NVIDIA GPU >= Pascal, Mellanox IB >= mlx5, or an AMD GPU.
 
 config DEVICE_PRIVATE
 	bool "Unaddressable device memory (GPU memory, ...)"
-- 
2.22.0