From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Minchan Kim Subject: Re: [RFCv2 5/6] mm: introduce external memory hinting API Date: Fri, 31 May 2019 22:19:00 +0900 Message-ID: <20190531131859.GB195463@google.com> References: <20190531064313.193437-1-minchan@kernel.org> <20190531064313.193437-6-minchan@kernel.org> <20190531083757.GH6896@dhcp22.suse.cz> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Return-path: Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20190531083757.GH6896@dhcp22.suse.cz> Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org To: Michal Hocko Cc: Andrew Morton , linux-mm , LKML , linux-api@vger.kernel.org, Johannes Weiner , Tim Murray , Joel Fernandes , Suren Baghdasaryan , Daniel Colascione , Shakeel Butt , Sonny Rao , Brian Geffon , jannh@google.com, oleg@redhat.com, christian@brauner.io, oleksandr@redhat.com, hdanton@sina.com List-Id: linux-api@vger.kernel.org On Fri, May 31, 2019 at 10:37:57AM +0200, Michal Hocko wrote: > On Fri 31-05-19 15:43:12, Minchan Kim wrote: > > There is some usecase that centralized userspace daemon want to give > > a memory hint like MADV_[COLD|PAGEEOUT] to other process. Android's > > ActivityManagerService is one of them. > > > > It's similar in spirit to madvise(MADV_WONTNEED), but the information > > required to make the reclaim decision is not known to the app. Instead, > > it is known to the centralized userspace daemon(ActivityManagerService), > > and that daemon must be able to initiate reclaim on its own without > > any app involvement. > > > > To solve the issue, this patch introduces new syscall process_madvise(2). > > It could give a hint to the exeternal process of pidfd. > > > > int process_madvise(int pidfd, void *addr, size_t length, int advise, > > unsigned long cookie, unsigned long flag); > > > > Since it could affect other process's address range, only privileged > > process(CAP_SYS_PTRACE) or something else(e.g., being the same UID) > > gives it the right to ptrace the process could use it successfully. > > > > The syscall has a cookie argument to privode atomicity(i.e., detect > > target process's address space change since monitor process has parsed > > the address range of target process so the operaion could fail in case > > of happening race). Although there is no interface to get a cookie > > at this moment, it could be useful to consider it as argument to avoid > > introducing another new syscall in future. It could support *atomicity* > > for disruptive hint(e.g., MADV_DONTNEED|FREE). > > flag argument is reserved for future use if we need to extend the API. > > Providing an API that is incomplete will not fly. Really. As this really > begs for much more discussion and it would be good to move on with the > core idea of the pro active memory memory management from userspace > usecase. Could you split out the core change so that we can move on and > leave the external for a later discussion. I believe this would lead to > a smoother integration. No problem but I need to understand what you want a little bit more because I thought this patchset is already step by step so if we reach the agreement of part of them like [1-5/6], it could be merged first. Could you say how you want to split the patchset for forward progress? Thanks.