Re: [PATCH 5/5] vfio-pci: Best-effort huge pfnmaps with !MAP_FIXED mappings

Peter Xu
2025-06-18T16:56:13Z

On Tue, Jun 17, 2025 at 07:36:08PM -0400, Peter Xu wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 17, 2025 at 08:18:07PM -0300, Jason Gunthorpe wrote:
> > On Tue, Jun 17, 2025 at 04:56:13PM -0400, Peter Xu wrote:
> > > On Mon, Jun 16, 2025 at 08:00:11PM -0300, Jason Gunthorpe wrote:
> > > > On Mon, Jun 16, 2025 at 06:06:23PM -0400, Peter Xu wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > Can I understand it as a suggestion to pass in a bitmask into the core mm
> > > > > API (e.g. keep the name of mm_get_unmapped_area_aligned()), instead of a
> > > > > constant "align", so that core mm would try to allocate from the largest
> > > > > size to smaller until it finds some working VA to use?
> > > >
> > > > I don't think you need a bitmask.
> > > >
> > > > Split the concerns, the caller knows what is inside it's FD. It only
> > > > needs to provide the highest pgoff aligned folio/pfn within the FD.
> > >
> > > Ultimately I even dropped this hint. I found that it's not really
> > > get_unmapped_area()'s job to detect over-sized pgoffs. It's mmap()'s job.
> > > So I decided to avoid this parameter as of now.
> >
> > Well, the point of the pgoff is only what you said earlier, to adjust
> > the starting alignment so the pgoff aligned high order folios/pfns
> > line up properly.
>
> I meant "highest pgoff" that I dropped.
>
> We definitely need the pgoff to make it work. So here I dropped "highest
> pgoff" passed from the caller because I decided to leave such check to the
> mmap() hook later.
>
> >
> > > > The mm knows what leaf page tables options exist. It should try to
> > > > align to the closest leaf page table size that is <= the FD's max
> > > > aligned folio.
> > >
> > > So again IMHO this is also not per-FD information, but needs to be passed
> > > over from the driver for each call.
> >
> > It is per-FD in the sense that each FD is unique and each range of
> > pgoff could have a unique maximum.
> >
> > > Likely the "order" parameter appeared in other discussions to imply a
> > > maximum supported size from the driver side (or, for a folio, but that is
> > > definitely another user after this series can land).
> >
> > Yes, it is the only information the driver can actually provide and
> > comes directly from what it will install in the VMA.
> >
> > > So far I didn't yet add the "order", because currently VFIO definitely
> > > supports all max orders the system supports. Maybe we can add the order
> > > when there's a real need, but maybe it won't happen in the near
> > > future?
> >
> > The purpose of the order is to prevent over alignment and waste of
> > VMA. Your technique to use the length to limit alignment instead is
> > good enough for VFIO but not very general.
>
> Yes that's also something I didn't like. I think I'll just go ahead and
> add the order parameter, then use it in previous patch too.

So I changed my mind, slightly. I can still have the "order" parameter to
make the API cleaner (even if it'll be a pure overhead.. because all
existing caller will pass in PUD_SIZE as of now), but I think I'll still
stick with the ifdef in patch 4, as I mentioned here:

https://lore.kernel.org/all/aFGMG3763eSv9l8b@x1.local/

The problem is I just noticed yet again that exporting
huge_mapping_get_va_aligned() for all configs doesn't make sense. At least
it'll need something like this to make !MMU compile for VFIO, while this is
definitely some ugliness I also want to avoid..

===8<===
diff --git a/include/linux/huge_mm.h b/include/linux/huge_mm.h
index 59fdafb1034b..f40a8fb64eaa 100644
--- a/include/linux/huge_mm.h
+++ b/include/linux/huge_mm.h
@@ -548,7 +548,11 @@ static inline unsigned long
huge_mapping_get_va_aligned(struct file *filp, unsigned long addr,
unsigned long len, unsigned long pgoff, unsigned long flags)
{
+#ifdef CONFIG_MMU
return mm_get_unmapped_area(current->mm, filp, addr, len, pgoff, flags);
+#else
+ return 0;
+#endif
}

static inline bool
===8<===

The issue is still mm_get_unmapped_area() is only exported on CONFIG_MMU,
so we need to special case that for huge_mapping_get_va_aligned(), and here
for !THP && !MMU.

Besides the ugliness, it's also about how to choose a default value to
return when mm_get_unmapped_area() isn't available.

I gave it a defalut value (0) as example, but I don't even thnk that 0
makes sense. It would (if ever triggerable from any caller on !MMU) mean
it will return 0 directly to __get_unmapped_area() and further do_mmap()
(of !MMU code, which will come down from ksys_mmap_pgoff() of nommu.c) will
take that addr=0 to be the addr to mmap.. that sounds wrong.

There's just no way to provide a sane default value for !MMU.

So going one step back: huge_mapping_get_va_aligned() (or whatever name we
prefer) doesn't make sense to be exported always, but only when CONFIG_MMU.
It should follow the same way we treat mm_get_unmapped_area().

Here it also goes back to the question on why !MMU even support mmap():

https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/nommu-mmap.txt

So, for the case of v4l driver (v4l2_m2m_get_unmapped_area that I used to
quote, which only defines in !MMU and I used to misread..), for example,
it's really a minimal mmap() support on ucLinux and that's all about that.
My gut feeling is the noMMU use case more or less abused the current
get_unmapped_area() hook to provide the physical addresses, so as to make
mmap() work even on ucLinux.

It's for sure not a proof that we should have huge_mapping_get_va_aligned()
or mm_get_unmapped_area() availalbe even for !MMU. That's all about VAs
and that do not exist in !MMU as a concept.

Thanks,

--
Peter Xu