linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH] dma-mapping: fix page attributes for dma_mmap

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Message-ID: <20190806160854.htk67msiyadlrl4m@willie-the-truck>
Date:   Tue, 6 Aug 2019 17:08:54 +0100
From:   Will Deacon <will@...nel.org>
To:     Christoph Hellwig <hch@....de>
Cc:     iommu@...ts.linux-foundation.org,
        Shawn Anastasio <shawn@...stas.io>,
        Michael Ellerman <mpe@...erman.id.au>,
        Russell King <linux@...linux.org.uk>,
        Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@....com>,
        Robin Murphy <robin.murphy@....com>,
        linuxppc-dev@...ts.ozlabs.org,
        linux-arm-kernel@...ts.infradead.org, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] dma-mapping: fix page attributes for dma_mmap_*

On Sat, Aug 03, 2019 at 08:48:12AM +0200, Christoph Hellwig wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 02, 2019 at 11:38:03AM +0100, Will Deacon wrote:
> > 
> > So this boils down to a terminology mismatch. The Arm architecture doesn't have
> > anything called "write combine", so in Linux we instead provide what the Arm
> > architecture calls "Normal non-cacheable" memory for pgprot_writecombine().
> > Amongst other things, this memory type permits speculation, unaligned accesses
> > and merging of writes. I found something in the architecture spec about
> > non-cachable memory, but it's written in Armglish[1].
> > 
> > pgprot_noncached(), on the other hand, provides what the architecture calls
> > Strongly Ordered or Device-nGnRnE memory. This is intended for mapping MMIO
> > (i.e. PCI config space) and therefore forbids speculation, preserves access
> > size, requires strict alignment and also forces write responses to come from
> > the endpoint.
> > 
> > I think the naming mismatch is historical, but on arm64 we wanted to use the
> > same names as arm32 so that any drivers using these things directly would get
> > the same behaviour.
> 
> That all makes sense, but it totally needs a comment.  I'll try to draft
> one based on this.  I've also looked at the arm32 code a bit more, and
> it seems arm always (?) supported Normal non-cacheable attribute, but
> Linux only optionally uses it for arm v6+ because of fears of drivers
> missing barriers.

I think it was also to do with aliasing, but I don't recall all of the
details.

> The other really weird things is that in arm32
> pgprot_dmacoherent incudes the L_PTE_XN bit, which from my understanding
> is the no-execture bit, but pgprot_writecombine does not.  This seems to
> not very unintentional.  So minus that the whole DMA_ATTR_WRITE_COMBІNE
> seems to be about flagging old arm specific drivers as having the proper
> barriers in places and otherwise is a no-op.

I think it only matters for Armv7 CPUs, but yes, we should probably be
setting L_PTE_XN for both of these memory types.

> Here is my tentative plan:
> 
>  - respin this patch with a small fix to handle the
>    DMA_ATTR_NON_CONSISTENT (as in ignore it unless actually supported),
>    but keep the name as-is to avoid churn.  This should allow 5.3
>    inclusion and backports
>  - remove DMA_ATTR_WRITE_COMBINE support from mips, probably also 5.3
>    material.
>  - move all architectures but arm over to just define
>    pgprot_dmacoherent, including a comment with the above explanation
>    for arm64.

That would be great, thanks.

>  - make DMA_ATTR_WRITE_COMBINE a no-op and schedule it for removal,
>    thus removing the last instances of arch_dma_mmap_pgprot

All sounds good to me, although I suppose 32-bit Arm platforms without
CONFIG_ARM_DMA_MEM_BUFFERABLE may run into issues if DMA_ATTR_WRITE_COMBINE
disappears. Only one way to find out...

Will