linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH v2] Documentation/page_tables: Add info about MMU/TLB and Page Faults

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Date:   Tue, 15 Aug 2023 14:58:33 +0200
From:   Linus Walleij <linus.walleij@...aro.org>
To:     "Fabio M. De Francesco" <fmdefrancesco@...il.com>
Cc:     Jonathan Corbet <corbet@....net>,
        Jonathan Cameron <Jonathan.Cameron@...wei.com>,
        Mike Rapoport <rppt@...nel.org>, linux-doc@...r.kernel.org,
        linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, linux-mm@...ck.org,
        Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
        Ira Weiny <ira.weiny@...el.com>,
        Matthew Wilcox <willy@...radead.org>,
        Randy Dunlap <rdunlap@...radead.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v2] Documentation/page_tables: Add info about MMU/TLB and
 Page Faults

Hi Fabio!

trying to answer these things as best I can!

Notice I'm not natively anglo-saxon either.

It's refreshing to have a discussion about formulations in text
in addition to our everyday technical churn!

On Tue, Aug 15, 2023 at 2:27 PM Fabio M. De Francesco
<fmdefrancesco@...il.com> wrote:
> On martedì 15 agosto 2023 10:51:24 CEST Linus Walleij wrote:
> > > +Instead, there are also common and expected other causes of page faults.
> > > These
> > The word you are looking for is "Additionally" right?
> >
> > "Additionally, there are..."
>
> I was only able to use "Instead" to express that, contrary to the former
> conditions that is unexpected and uncommon, there are other expected and
> common causes of page faults. I thought that "Instead" stresses that the
> latter causes carry with them opposite and wanted consequences.
>
> I think of "additionally" as a means to introduce less important and less
> frequently occurring conditions.
>
> Nevertheless, I'll change it to "Additionally" as you are asking for.

I think the following is the best:

"There are also other, common and expected causes of page faults".

No bridge words. I can't really explain it, it's just language intuition. :/

An option is to also move the section about the common case section
before the exceptions, which may be more natural to the flow of the text.

> > > +Swapping can't work for memory mapped by kernel logical addresses. These
> > > are a
> > "kernel logical addresses" -> "kernel-internal logical addresses"
>
> My only question is about why you prefer "kernel-internal" to a straight
> "kernel". Can you please say more about this?

It's because the kernel handles many address spaces and is aware about
also the userspace address space and the physical address space.
So just so emphasize which one it is.

Yours,
Linus Walleij