linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH v2 2/2] drm/ttm: Fix vm page protection handling

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Date:   Wed, 4 Dec 2019 15:42:48 +0100
From:   Michal Hocko <mhocko@...nel.org>
To:     Thomas Hellström (VMware) 
        <thomas_os@...pmail.org>
Cc:     linux-mm@...ck.org, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
        dri-devel@...ts.freedesktop.org, pv-drivers@...are.com,
        linux-graphics-maintainer@...are.com,
        Thomas Hellstrom <thellstrom@...are.com>,
        Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
        "Matthew Wilcox (Oracle)" <willy@...radead.org>,
        "Kirill A. Shutemov" <kirill.shutemov@...ux.intel.com>,
        Ralph Campbell <rcampbell@...dia.com>,
        Jérôme Glisse <jglisse@...hat.com>,
        Christian König <christian.koenig@....com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v2 2/2] drm/ttm: Fix vm page protection handling

On Wed 04-12-19 15:36:58, Thomas Hellström (VMware) wrote:
> On 12/4/19 3:35 PM, Michal Hocko wrote:
> > On Wed 04-12-19 15:16:09, Thomas Hellström (VMware) wrote:
> > > On 12/4/19 2:52 PM, Michal Hocko wrote:
> > > > On Tue 03-12-19 11:48:53, Thomas Hellström (VMware) wrote:
> > > > > From: Thomas Hellstrom <thellstrom@...are.com>
> > > > > 
> > > > > TTM graphics buffer objects may, transparently to user-space,  move
> > > > > between IO and system memory. When that happens, all PTEs pointing to the
> > > > > old location are zapped before the move and then faulted in again if
> > > > > needed. When that happens, the page protection caching mode- and
> > > > > encryption bits may change and be different from those of
> > > > > struct vm_area_struct::vm_page_prot.
> > > > > 
> > > > > We were using an ugly hack to set the page protection correctly.
> > > > > Fix that and instead use vmf_insert_mixed_prot() and / or
> > > > > vmf_insert_pfn_prot().
> > > > > Also get the default page protection from
> > > > > struct vm_area_struct::vm_page_prot rather than using vm_get_page_prot().
> > > > > This way we catch modifications done by the vm system for drivers that
> > > > > want write-notification.
> > > > So essentially this should have any new side effect on functionality it
> > > > is just making a hacky/ugly code less so?
> > > Functionality is unchanged. The use of a on-stack vma copy was severely
> > > frowned upon in an earlier thread, which also points to another similar
> > > example using vmf_insert_pfn_prot().
> > > 
> > > https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20190905103541.4161-2-thomas_os@shipmail.org/
> > > 
> > > > In other words what are the
> > > > consequences of having page protection inconsistent from vma's?
> > > During the years, it looks like the caching- and encryption flags of
> > > vma::vm_page_prot have been largely removed from usage. From what I can
> > > tell, there are no more places left that can affect TTM. We discussed
> > > __split_huge_pmd_locked() towards the end of that thread, but that doesn't
> > > affect TTM even with huge page-table entries.
> > Please state all those details/assumptions you are operating on in the
> > changelog.
> 
> Thanks. I'll update the patchset and add that.

And thinking about that this also begs for a comment in the code to
explain that some (which?) mappings might have a mismatch and the
generic code have to be careful. Because as things stand now this seems
to be really subtle and happen to work _now_ and might break in the future.
Or what does prevent a generic code to stumble over this discrepancy?
-- 
Michal Hocko
SUSE Labs