Message-ID: <87cypuvh2i.fsf@nvdebian.thelocal>
Date: Thu, 09 May 2024 13:48:31 -0700
From: Alistair Popple <apopple@...dia.com>
To: Jason Gunthorpe <jgg@...pe.ca>
Cc: Logan Gunthorpe <logang@...tatee.com>, Martin Oliveira
 <Martin.Oliveira@...eticom.com>, Christoph Hellwig <hch@....de>, Dan
 Williams <dan.j.williams@...el.com>, LKML <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
 "linux-rdma@...r.kernel.org" <linux-rdma@...r.kernel.org>,
 "linux-mm@...ck.org" <linux-mm@...ck.org>
Subject: Re: P2PDMA in Userspace RDMA


Jason Gunthorpe <jgg@...pe.ca> writes:

> On Thu, May 09, 2024 at 11:31:33AM -0600, Logan Gunthorpe wrote:
>> Hi Jason,
>> 
>> We've become interested again in enabling P2PDMA transactions with
>> userspace RDMA and the NVMe CMBs we are already exporting to userspace
>> from our previous work.
>> 
>> Enabling FOLL_PCI_P2PDMA in ib_umem_get is almost a trivial change, but
>> there are two issues holding us back.
>> 
>> The biggest issue is that we disallowed FOLL_LONGTERM with
>> FOLL_PCI_P2PDMA out of concern that P2PDMA had the same problem as
>> fs-dax.
>
> Yeah, it was not a great outcome of that issue.

I recently came across this trying to do something similar with io_uring
to mapped P2PDMA pages for testing purposes. I commented out the
FOLL_PCI_P2PDMA check but it hung/stalled during process teardown so
there might be something there.

>> See [1] to review the discussion from 2 years ago. However, in
>> trying to understand the problem again, I'm not sure that concern was
>> valid. In P2PDMA, unmap_mapping_range() is strictly only called on
>> driver unbind when everything is getting torn down[2]. The next thing
>> that happens immediately after the unmap is the tear down of the pgmap
>> which drops the elevated reference on the pages and waits for all page's
>> reference counts to go back to zero. This will effectively wait until
>> all longterm pins involving the memory have been released. This can
>> cause a hang on unbind but, in your words, its "annoying not critical".
>
> Yes
>
> But you are looking at the code as it is right now, and stuff has been
> quitely fixed with the pgmap refcount area since. I think it is
> probably good now. IIRC it was pushed over the finish line when the
> ZONE_DEVICE/PRIVATE pages were converted to have normal reference
> counting.

But P2P DMA pages are still in the off-by-one reference counting
scheme. My RFR series[1] (aims) to fix that, although the pgmap
refcounting scheme needs a closer look because I think doing the page
refcounting properly allows some cleanups there.

[1] - https://lore.kernel.org/linux-mm/cover.fe275e9819458a4bbb9451b888cafb88af8867d4.1712796818.git-series.apopple@nvidia.com/

> If p2p is following the new ZONE_DEVICE scheme then it should be fine.
>
> It would be good to read over Alistair's latest series fixing up fsdax
> refcounts to see if anything pops out as problematic specifically with
> the P2P case.
>
> Otherwise a careful check through is probably all that is needed.
>
>> The other issue we hit when enabling this feature is the check for
>> vma_needs_dirty_tracking() in writable_file_mapping_allowed() during the
>> gup flow. This hits because the p2pdma code is using the common
>> sysfs/kernfs infrastructure to create the VMA which installs a
>> page_mkwrite operator()[4] to change the file update time on write. 
>
> Ah.
>
>> I don't think this feature really makes any sense for the P2PDMA
>> sysfs file which is really operating as an allocator in userspace --
>> the time on the file does not really need to reflect the last write
>> of some process that wrote to memory allocated using it. 
>
> Right, you shouldn't have mkwrite for these pages.
>
> Jason

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