Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2024 14:45:00 +0000
From: Ryan Roberts <ryan.roberts@....com>
To: David Hildenbrand <david@...hat.com>, Mark Rutland <mark.rutland@....com>
Cc: Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@....com>, Will Deacon <will@...nel.org>,
 Ard Biesheuvel <ardb@...nel.org>, Marc Zyngier <maz@...nel.org>,
 James Morse <james.morse@....com>, Andrey Ryabinin <ryabinin.a.a@...il.com>,
 Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
 Matthew Wilcox <willy@...radead.org>,
 Kefeng Wang <wangkefeng.wang@...wei.com>, John Hubbard
 <jhubbard@...dia.com>, Zi Yan <ziy@...dia.com>,
 Barry Song <21cnbao@...il.com>, Alistair Popple <apopple@...dia.com>,
 Yang Shi <shy828301@...il.com>, Nicholas Piggin <npiggin@...il.com>,
 Christophe Leroy <christophe.leroy@...roup.eu>,
 "Aneesh Kumar K.V" <aneesh.kumar@...nel.org>,
 "Naveen N. Rao" <naveen.n.rao@...ux.ibm.com>,
 Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>, Ingo Molnar <mingo@...hat.com>,
 Borislav Petkov <bp@...en8.de>, Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@...ux.intel.com>,
 "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@...or.com>, linux-arm-kernel@...ts.infradead.org,
 x86@...nel.org, linuxppc-dev@...ts.ozlabs.org, linux-mm@...ck.org,
 linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH v5 19/25] arm64/mm: Wire up PTE_CONT for user mappings

On 12/02/2024 13:54, David Hildenbrand wrote:
>>> If so, I wonder if we could instead do that comparison modulo the access/dirty
>>> bits,
>>
>> I think that would work - but will need to think a bit more on it.
>>
>>> and leave ptep_get_lockless() only reading a single entry?
>>
>> I think we will need to do something a bit less fragile. ptep_get() does collect
>> the access/dirty bits so its confusing if ptep_get_lockless() doesn't IMHO. So
>> we will likely want to rename the function and make its documentation explicit
>> that it does not return those bits.
>>
>> ptep_get_lockless_noyoungdirty()? yuk... Any ideas?
>>
>> Of course if I could convince you the current implementation is safe, I might be
>> able to sidestep this optimization until a later date?
> 
> As discussed (and pointed out abive), there might be quite some callsites where
> we don't really care about uptodate accessed/dirty bits -- where ptep_get() is
> used nowadays.
> 
> One way to approach that I had in mind was having an explicit interface:
> 
> ptep_get()
> ptep_get_uptodate()
> ptep_get_lockless()
> ptep_get_lockless_uptodate()

Yes, I like the direction of this. I guess we anticipate that call sites
requiring the "_uptodate" variant will be the minority so it makes sense to use
the current names for the "_not_uptodate" variants? But to do a slow migration,
it might be better/safer to have the weaker variant use the new name - that
would allow us to downgrade one at a time?

> 
> Especially the last one might not be needed.
I've done a scan through the code and agree with Mark's original conclusions.
Additionally, huge_pte_alloc() (which isn't used for arm64) doesn't rely on
access/dirty info. So I think I could migrate everything to the weaker variant
fairly easily.

> 
> Futher, "uptodate" might not be the best choice because of PageUptodate() and
> friends. But it's better than "youngdirty"/"noyoungdirty" IMHO.

Certainly agree with "noyoungdirty" being a horrible name. How about "_sync" /
"_nosync"?

> 
> Of course, any such changes require care and are better done one step at at time
> separately.
> 

So I propose to introduce ptep_get_lockless_nosync() (name up for discussion)
and migrate all users to it, as part of this series. This will side-step Mark's
correctness concerns. We can add ptep_get_nosync() later and migrate slowly.

Shout if you think this is a bad plan.

Thanks,
Ryan

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