Re: [PATCH 2/3] mm/gup: Introduce get_user_pages_fast_longterm()

[Jason Gunthorpe <jgg@ziepe.ca>]

On Mon, Feb 11, 2019 at 01:52:38PM -0800, Ira Weiny wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 11, 2019 at 01:39:12PM -0800, John Hubbard wrote:
> > On 2/11/19 1:26 PM, Ira Weiny wrote:
> > > On Mon, Feb 11, 2019 at 01:13:56PM -0800, John Hubbard wrote:
> > >> On 2/11/19 12:39 PM, Jason Gunthorpe wrote:
> > >>> On Mon, Feb 11, 2019 at 12:16:42PM -0800, ira.weiny@intel.com wrote:
> > >>>> From: Ira Weiny <ira.weiny@intel.com>
> > >> [...]
> > >> It seems to me that the longterm vs. short-term is of questionable value.
> > > 
> > > This is exactly why I did not post this before.  I've been waiting our other
> > > discussions on how GUP pins are going to be handled to play out.  But with the
> > > netdev thread today[1] it seems like we need to make sure we have a "safe" fast
> > > variant for a while.  Introducing FOLL_LONGTERM seemed like the cleanest way to
> > > do that even if we will not need the distinction in the future...  :-(
> > 
> > Yes, I agree. Below...
> > 
> > > [...]
> > > This is also why I did not change the get_user_pages_longterm because we could
> > > be ripping this all out by the end of the year...  (I hope. :-)
> > > 
> > > So while this does "pollute" the GUP family of calls I'm hoping it is not
> > > forever.
> > > 
> > > Ira
> > > 
> > > [1] https://lkml.org/lkml/2019/2/11/1789
> > > 
> > 
> > Yes, and to be clear, I think your patchset here is fine. It is easy to find
> > the FOLL_LONGTERM callers if and when we want to change anything. I just think
> > also it's appopriate to go a bit further, and use FOLL_LONGTERM all by itself.
> > 
> > That's because in either design outcome, it's better that way:
> > 
> > is just right. The gup API already has _fast and non-fast variants, and once
> > you get past a couple, you end up with a multiplication of names that really
> > work better as flags. We're there.
> > 
> > the _longterm API variants.
> 
> Fair enough.   But to do that correctly I think we will need to convert
> get_user_pages_fast() to use flags as well.  I have a version of this series
> which includes a patch does this, but the patch touched a lot of subsystems and
> a couple of different architectures...[1]

I think this should be done anyhow, it is trouble the two basically
identical interfaces have different signatures. This already caused a
bug in vfio..

I also wonder if someone should think about making fast into a flag
too..

But I'm not sure when fast should be used vs when it shouldn't :(

Jason