Re: [PATCH 01 of 11] mmu-notifier-core

[Andrea Arcangeli <andrea@qumranet.com>]

On Mon, May 05, 2008 at 12:25:06PM -0500, Jack Steiner wrote:
> Agree. My apologies... I should have caught it.

No problem.

> __mmu_notifier_register/__mmu_notifier_unregister seems like a better way to
> go, although either is ok.

If you also like __mmu_notifier_register more I'll go with it. The
bitflags seems like a bit of overkill as I can't see the need of any
other bitflag other than this one and they also can't be removed as
easily in case you'll find a way to call it outside the lock later.

> Let me finish my testing. At one time, I did not use ->release but
> with all the locking & teardown changes, I need to do some reverification.

If you didn't implement it you shall apply this patch but you shall
read carefully the comment I written that covers that usage case.

diff --git a/include/linux/mmu_notifier.h b/include/linux/mmu_notifier.h
--- a/include/linux/mmu_notifier.h
+++ b/include/linux/mmu_notifier.h
@@ -29,10 +29,25 @@ struct mmu_notifier_ops {
 	/*
 	 * Called either by mmu_notifier_unregister or when the mm is
 	 * being destroyed by exit_mmap, always before all pages are
-	 * freed. It's mandatory to implement this method. This can
-	 * run concurrently with other mmu notifier methods and it
+	 * freed. This can run concurrently with other mmu notifier
+	 * methods (the ones invoked outside the mm context) and it
 	 * should tear down all secondary mmu mappings and freeze the
-	 * secondary mmu.
+	 * secondary mmu. If this method isn't implemented you've to
+	 * be sure that nothing could possibly write to the pages
+	 * through the secondary mmu by the time the last thread with
+	 * tsk->mm == mm exits.
+	 *
+	 * As side note: the pages freed after ->release returns could
+	 * be immediately reallocated by the gart at an alias physical
+	 * address with a different cache model, so if ->release isn't
+	 * implemented because all memory accesses through the
+	 * secondary mmu implicitly are terminated by the time the
+	 * last thread of this mm quits, you've also to be sure that
+	 * speculative hardware operations can't allocate dirty
+	 * cachelines in the cpu that could not be snooped and made
+	 * coherent with the other read and write operations happening
+	 * through the gart alias address, leading to memory
+	 * corruption.
 	 */
 	void (*release)(struct mmu_notifier *mn,
 			struct mm_struct *mm);
diff --git a/mm/mmu_notifier.c b/mm/mmu_notifier.c
--- a/mm/mmu_notifier.c
+++ b/mm/mmu_notifier.c
@@ -59,7 +59,8 @@ void __mmu_notifier_release(struct mm_st
 		 * from establishing any more sptes before all the
 		 * pages in the mm are freed.
 		 */
-		mn->ops->release(mn, mm);
+		if (mn->ops->release)
+			mn->ops->release(mn, mm);
 		srcu_read_unlock(&mm->mmu_notifier_mm->srcu, srcu);
 		spin_lock(&mm->mmu_notifier_mm->lock);
 	}
@@ -251,7 +252,8 @@ void mmu_notifier_unregister(struct mmu_
 		 * guarantee ->release is called before freeing the
 		 * pages.
 		 */
-		mn->ops->release(mn, mm);
+		if (mn->ops->release)
+			mn->ops->release(mn, mm);
 		srcu_read_unlock(&mm->mmu_notifier_mm->srcu, srcu);
 	} else
 		spin_unlock(&mm->mmu_notifier_mm->lock);