linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH RFC] mm/madvise: introduce MADV

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Date:   Wed, 17 Feb 2021 08:46:18 -0800
From:   Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@...el.com>
To:     David Hildenbrand <david@...hat.com>, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Cc:     linux-mm@...ck.org, Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
        Arnd Bergmann <arnd@...db.de>, Michal Hocko <mhocko@...e.com>,
        Oscar Salvador <osalvador@...e.de>,
        Matthew Wilcox <willy@...radead.org>,
        Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@...hat.com>,
        Minchan Kim <minchan@...nel.org>, Jann Horn <jannh@...gle.com>,
        Jason Gunthorpe <jgg@...pe.ca>,
        Hugh Dickins <hughd@...gle.com>,
        Rik van Riel <riel@...riel.com>,
        "Michael S . Tsirkin" <mst@...hat.com>,
        "Kirill A . Shutemov" <kirill.shutemov@...ux.intel.com>,
        Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@...e.cz>,
        Richard Henderson <rth@...ddle.net>,
        Ivan Kokshaysky <ink@...assic.park.msu.ru>,
        Matt Turner <mattst88@...il.com>,
        Thomas Bogendoerfer <tsbogend@...ha.franken.de>,
        "James E.J. Bottomley" <James.Bottomley@...senPartnership.com>,
        Helge Deller <deller@....de>, Chris Zankel <chris@...kel.net>,
        Max Filippov <jcmvbkbc@...il.com>, linux-alpha@...r.kernel.org,
        linux-mips@...r.kernel.org, linux-parisc@...r.kernel.org,
        linux-xtensa@...ux-xtensa.org, linux-arch@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH RFC] mm/madvise: introduce MADV_POPULATE to
 prefault/prealloc memory

On 2/17/21 7:48 AM, David Hildenbrand wrote:
> While MADV_DONTNEED and FALLOC_FL_PUNCH_HOLE provide us ways to reliably
> discard memory, there is no generic approach to populate ("preallocate")
> memory.
> 
> Although mmap() supports MAP_POPULATE, it is not applicable to the concept
> of sparse memory mappings, where we want to do populate/discard
> dynamically and avoid expensive/problematic remappings. In addition,
> we never actually report error during the final populate phase - it is
> best-effort only.

Seems pretty sane to me.

But, I was surprised that MADV_WILLNEED was no mentioned.  It might be
nice to touch on on why MADV_WILLNEED is a bad choice for this
functionality?  We could theoretically have it populate anonymous
mappings instead of just swapping in.

I guess it's possible that folks are using MADV_WILLNEED on sparse
mappings that they don't want to populate, but it would be nice to get
that in the changelog.

I was also a bit bummed to see the broad VM_IO/PFNMAP restriction show
up again.  I was just looking at implementing pre-faulting for the new
SGX driver:

> https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/arch/x86/kernel/cpu/sgx/driver.c

It has a vm_ops->fault handler, but the VMAs are VM_IO.  It obviously
don't work with gup, though.  Not a deal breaker, and something we could
certainly add to this later.