linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH RFC 16/19] mm/frame-vector: remove FOLL

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Date:   Tue, 22 Nov 2022 09:33:16 -0800
From:   Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>
To:     Hans Verkuil <hverkuil@...all.nl>
Cc:     Tomasz Figa <tfiga@...omium.org>,
        David Hildenbrand <david@...hat.com>,
        Marek Szyprowski <m.szyprowski@...sung.com>,
        linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, linux-mm@...ck.org,
        etnaviv@...ts.freedesktop.org, dri-devel@...ts.freedesktop.org,
        linux-arm-kernel@...ts.infradead.org,
        linux-samsung-soc@...r.kernel.org, linux-rdma@...r.kernel.org,
        linux-media@...r.kernel.org, linux-kselftest@...r.kernel.org,
        Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
        Jason Gunthorpe <jgg@...pe.ca>,
        John Hubbard <jhubbard@...dia.com>,
        Peter Xu <peterx@...hat.com>,
        Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>,
        Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@...hat.com>,
        Hugh Dickins <hughd@...gle.com>, Nadav Amit <namit@...are.com>,
        Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@...e.cz>,
        Matthew Wilcox <willy@...radead.org>,
        Mike Kravetz <mike.kravetz@...cle.com>,
        Muchun Song <songmuchun@...edance.com>,
        Lucas Stach <l.stach@...gutronix.de>,
        David Airlie <airlied@...il.com>,
        Oded Gabbay <ogabbay@...nel.org>,
        Arnd Bergmann <arnd@...db.de>,
        Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab@...nel.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH RFC 16/19] mm/frame-vector: remove FOLL_FORCE usage

On Tue, Nov 22, 2022 at 4:25 AM Hans Verkuil <hverkuil@...all.nl> wrote:
>
> I tracked the use of 'force' all the way back to the first git commit
> (2.6.12-rc1) in the very old video-buf.c. So it is very, very old and the
> reason is lost in the mists of time.

Well, not entirely.

For archaeology reasons, I went back to the old BK history, which
exists as a git conversion in

    https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tglx/history.git/

and there you can actually find it.

Not with a lot of explanations, though - it's commit b7649ef789
("[PATCH] videobuf update"):

    This updates the video-buf.c module (helper module for video buffer
    management).  Some memory management fixes, also some adaptions to the
    final v4l2 api.

but it went from

         err = get_user_pages(current,current->mm,
-                            data, dma->nr_pages,
-                            rw == READ, 0, /* don't force */
+                            data & PAGE_MASK, dma->nr_pages,
+                            rw == READ, 1, /* force */
                             dma->pages, NULL);

in that commit.

So it goes back to October 2002.

> Looking at this old LWN article https://lwn.net/Articles/28548/ suggests
> that it might be related to calling get_user_pages for write buffers

The timing roughly matches.

> I assume that removing FOLL_FORCE from 'FOLL_FORCE|FOLL_WRITE' will still
> allow drivers to read from the buffer?

The issue with some of the driver hacks has been that

 - they only want to read, and the buffer may be read-only

 - they then used FOLL_WRITE despite that, because they want to break
COW (due to the issue that David is now fixing with his series)

 - but that means that the VM layer says "nope, you can't write to
this read-only user mapping"

 - ... and then they use FOLL_FORCE to say "yes, I can".

iOW, the FOLL_FORCE may be entirely due to an (incorrect, but
historically needed) FOLL_WRITE.

             Linus