Re: open(2) says O_DIRECT works on 512 byte boundries?

Andrea Arcangeli
2009-02-06T18:38:33Z

On Fri, Feb 06, 2009 at 06:54:14PM +0100, Andrea Arcangeli wrote:
> + if (is_cow_mapping(vm_flags)) {
> + if (pte_write(pte)) {
> + ptep_set_wrprotect(src_mm, addr, src_pte);
> + pte = pte_wrprotect(pte);
> + }

While working on the mainline version that will definitely require a
tlb flush here if forcecow/PageGUP is set, I just realized to provide
an atomic per-page copy in the fork_pre_cow an explicit tlb flush is
needed in the pre-gup-fast version too.

if (is_cow_mapping(vm_flags)) {
if (pte_write(pte)) {
ptep_set_wrprotect(src_mm, addr, src_pte);
pte = pte_wrprotect(pte);
if (forcecow)
flush_tlb_page(src_vma, addr);
}
}

However to flush the 'src_mm' I feel I can't pass the 'dst_vma' that
fork is passing to copy_page_range. OTOH the dst_vma is needed to be
passed to the fork_pre_cow which is why fork.c was changed in the
patch to pass dst_vma instead of src_vma.

So I think I want to avoid all further confusion if the 'vma' belongs
to the src_mm or the dst_mm by passing both src_vma, and dst_vma from
fork to copy_page_tables. In the pre-gup-fast version the tlb flush is
mostly a nitpick and it would never lead to any practical issue, but
for mostly theoretical reasons it may be good idea to have the
per-page atomic copy there too, comments?