Date:   Tue, 12 Jan 2021 09:07:31 -0800
From:   Andy Lutomirski <luto@...nel.org>
To:     Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>
Cc:     John Hubbard <jhubbard@...dia.com>,
        Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@...hat.com>,
        Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
        Linux-MM <linux-mm@...ck.org>,
        Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
        Yu Zhao <yuzhao@...gle.com>, Andy Lutomirski <luto@...nel.org>,
        Peter Xu <peterx@...hat.com>,
        Pavel Emelyanov <xemul@...nvz.org>,
        Mike Kravetz <mike.kravetz@...cle.com>,
        Mike Rapoport <rppt@...ux.vnet.ibm.com>,
        Minchan Kim <minchan@...nel.org>,
        Will Deacon <will@...nel.org>,
        Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org>,
        Hugh Dickins <hughd@...gle.com>,
        "Kirill A. Shutemov" <kirill@...temov.name>,
        Matthew Wilcox <willy@...radead.org>,
        Oleg Nesterov <oleg@...hat.com>, Jann Horn <jannh@...gle.com>,
        Kees Cook <keescook@...omium.org>,
        Leon Romanovsky <leonro@...dia.com>,
        Jason Gunthorpe <jgg@...pe.ca>, Jan Kara <jack@...e.cz>,
        Kirill Tkhai <ktkhai@...tuozzo.com>,
        Nadav Amit <nadav.amit@...il.com>, Jens Axboe <axboe@...nel.dk>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 0/1] mm: restore full accuracy in COW page reuse

On Mon, Jan 11, 2021 at 2:18 PM Linus Torvalds
<torvalds@...ux-foundation.org> wrote:
>
> On Mon, Jan 11, 2021 at 11:19 AM Linus Torvalds
> <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org> wrote:

> Actually, what I think might be a better model is to actually
> strengthen the rules even more, and get rid of GUP_PIN_COUNTING_BIAS
> entirely.
>
> What we could do is just make a few clear rules explicit (most of
> which we already basically hold to). Starting from that basic
>
>  (a) Anonymous pages are made writable (ie COW) only when they have a
> page_count() of 1

Seems reasonable to me.

>
> That very simple rule then automatically results in the corollary
>
>  (b) a writable page in a COW mapping always starts out reachable
> _only_ from the page tables

Seems reasonable.  I guess that if the COW is triggered by GUP, then
it starts out reachable only from the page tables but then because
reachable through GUP very soon thereafter.

>
> and now we could have a couple of really simple new rules:
>
>  (c) we never ever make a writable page in a COW mapping read-only
> _unless_ it has a page_count() of 1

I don't love this.  Having mprotect() fail in a multithreaded process
because another thread happens to be doing a short-lived IO seems like
it may result in annoying intermittent bugs.

As I understand it, the issue is that the way we determine that we
need to COW a COWable page is that we see that it's read-only.  It
would be nice if we could separately track "the VMA allows writes" and
"this PTE points to a page that is private to the owning VMA", but
maybe there's no bit available for the latter other than looking at RO
vs RW directly.

>
>  (d) we never create a swap cache page out of a writable COW mapping page
>
> Now, if you combine these rules, the whole need for the
> GUP_PIN_COUNTING_BIAS basically goes away.
>
> Why? Because we know that the _only_ thing that can elevate the
> refcount of a writable COW page is GUP - we'll just make sure nothing
> else touches it.

How common is !FOLL_WRITE GUP?  We could potentially say that a
short-term !FOLL_WRITE GUP is permitted on an RO COW page and that a
subsequent COW on the page will wait for the GUP to go away.  This
might be too big a can of worms for the benefit it would provide,
though.

--Andy

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