Re: [PATCH 1/4] mm: Export flush_vm_area() to sync the PTEs upon construction

Joerg Roedel
2020-08-21T10:22:09Z

On Fri, Aug 21, 2020 at 10:54:22AM +0100, Chris Wilson wrote:
> Ok. I thought it had to be after assigning the *ptep. If we apply the
> sync first, do not have to worry about PGTBL_PTE_MODIFIED from the
> *ptep?

Hmm, if I understand the code correctly, you are re-implementing some
generic ioremap/vmalloc mapping logic in the i915 driver. I don't know
the reason, but if it is valid you need to manually call
arch_sync_kernel_mappings() from your driver like this to be correct:

if (ARCH_PAGE_TABLE_SYNC_MASK & PGTBL_PTE_MODIFIED)
arch_sync_kernel_mappings();

In practice this is a no-op, because nobody sets PGTBL_PTE_MODIFIED in
ARCH_PAGE_TABLE_SYNC_MASK, so the above code would be optimized away.

But what you really care about is the tracking in apply_to_page_range(),
as that allocates the !pte levels of your page-table, which needs
synchronization on x86-32.

Btw, what are the reasons you can't use generic vmalloc/ioremap
interfaces to map the range?

Regards,

Joerg