linux-kernel - Re: [RFC PATCH v3 0/2] mm: remove extra ZONE

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Date:   Mon, 5 Oct 2020 11:24:07 -0700
From:   Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@...el.com>
To:     Ralph Campbell <rcampbell@...dia.com>
Cc:     Linux MM <linux-mm@...ck.org>, kvm-ppc@...r.kernel.org,
        nouveau@...ts.freedesktop.org,
        Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
        Ira Weiny <ira.weiny@...el.com>,
        Matthew Wilcox <willy@...radead.org>,
        Jerome Glisse <jglisse@...hat.com>,
        John Hubbard <jhubbard@...dia.com>,
        Alistair Popple <apopple@...dia.com>,
        Christoph Hellwig <hch@....de>,
        Jason Gunthorpe <jgg@...dia.com>,
        Bharata B Rao <bharata@...ux.ibm.com>,
        Zi Yan <ziy@...dia.com>,
        "Kirill A . Shutemov" <kirill.shutemov@...ux.intel.com>,
        Yang Shi <yang.shi@...ux.alibaba.com>,
        Paul Mackerras <paulus@...abs.org>,
        Ben Skeggs <bskeggs@...hat.com>,
        Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>
Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH v3 0/2] mm: remove extra ZONE_DEVICE struct page refcount

On Thu, Oct 1, 2020 at 11:17 AM Ralph Campbell <rcampbell@...dia.com> wrote:
>
> This is still an RFC because after looking at the pmem/dax code some
> more, I realized that the ZONE_DEVICE struct pages are being inserted
> into the process' page tables with vmf_insert_mixed() and a zero
> refcount on the ZONE_DEVICE struct page. This is sort of OK because
> insert_pfn() increments the reference count on the pgmap which is what
> prevents memunmap_pages() from freeing the struct pages and it doesn't
> check for a non-zero struct page reference count.
> But, any calls to get_page() will hit the VM_BUG_ON_PAGE() that
> checks for a reference count == 0.
>
> // mmap() an ext4 file that is mounted -o dax.
> ext4_dax_fault()
>   ext4_dax_huge_fault()
>     dax_iomap_fault(&ext4_iomap_ops)
>       dax_iomap_pte_fault()
>         ops->iomap_begin() // ext4_iomap_begin()
>           ext4_map_blocks()
>           ext4_set_iomap()
>         dax_iomap_pfn()
>         dax_insert_entry()
>         vmf_insert_mixed(pfn)
>           __vm_insert_mixed()
>             if (!IS_ENABLED(CONFIG_ARCH_HAS_PTE_SPECIAL) &&
>                 !pfn_t_devmap(pfn) && pfn_t_valid(pfn))
>               insert_page()
>                 get_page(page) // XXX would trigger VM_BUG_ON_PAGE()
>                 page_add_file_rmap()
>                 set_pte_at()
>             else
>               insert_pfn()
>                 pte_mkdevmap()
>                 set_pte_at()
>
> Should pmem set the page reference count to one before inserting the
> pfn into the page tables (and decrement when removing devmap PTEs)?
> What about MEMORY_DEVICE_GENERIC and MEMORY_DEVICE_PCI_P2PDMA use cases?
> Where should they icrement/decrement the page reference count?
> I don't know enough about how these are used to really know what to
> do at this point. If people want me to continue to work on this series,
> I will need some guidance.

fs/dax could take the reference when inserting, but that would mean
that ext4 and xfs would need to go back to checking for 1 to be page
idle. I think that's ok because the filesystem is actually not
checking for page-idle it's checking for "get_user_pages()" idle.