Re: [PATCH v8 5/8] mm: Device exclusive memory access

Jason Gunthorpe
2021-05-18T17:33:39Z

On Tue, May 18, 2021 at 01:27:42PM -0400, Peter Xu wrote:

> I also have a pure and high level question regarding a process fork() when
> there're device exclusive ptes: would the two processes then own the device
> together? Is this a real usecase?

If the pages are MAP_SHARED then yes. All VMAs should point at the
same device_exclusive page and all VMA should migrate back to CPU
pages together.

> Indeed it'll be odd for a COW page since for COW page then it means after
> parent/child writting to the page it'll clone into two, then it's a mistery on
> which one will be the one that "exclusived owned" by the device..

For COW pages it is like every other fork case.. We can't reliably
write-protect the device_exclusive page during fork so we must copy it
at fork time.

Thus three reasonable choices:
- Copy to a new CPU page
- Migrate back to a CPU page and write protect it
- Copy to a new device exclusive page

Jason