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

Peter Xu
2025-06-13T15:27:02Z

On Fri, Jun 13, 2025 at 11:29:03AM -0300, Jason Gunthorpe wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 13, 2025 at 09:41:11AM -0400, Peter Xu wrote:
>
> > + /* Choose the alignment */
> > + if (IS_ENABLED(CONFIG_ARCH_SUPPORTS_PUD_PFNMAP) && phys_len >= PUD_SIZE) {
> > + ret = mm_get_unmapped_area_aligned(file, addr, len, phys_addr,
> > + flags, PUD_SIZE, 0);
> > + if (ret)
> > + return ret;
> > + }
> > +
> > + if (phys_len >= PMD_SIZE) {
> > + ret = mm_get_unmapped_area_aligned(file, addr, len, phys_addr,
> > + flags, PMD_SIZE, 0);
> > + if (ret)
> > + return ret;
> > + }
>
> Hurm, we have contiguous pages now, so PMD_SIZE is not so great, eg on
> 4k ARM with we can have a 16*2M=32MB contiguity, and 16k ARM uses
> contiguity to get a 32*16k=1GB option.
>
> Forcing to only align to the PMD or PUD seems suboptimal..

Right, however the cont-pte / cont-pmd are still not supported in huge
pfnmaps in general? It'll definitely be nice if someone could look at that
from ARM perspective, then provide support of both in one shot.

>
> > +fallback:
> > + return mm_get_unmapped_area(current->mm, file, addr, len, pgoff, flags);
>
> Why not put this into mm_get_unmapped_area_vmflags() and get rid of
> thp_get_unmapped_area_vmflags() too?
>
> Is there any reason the caller should have to do a retry?

We would still need thp_get_unmapped_area_vmflags() because that encodes
PMD_SIZE for THPs; we need the flexibility of providing any size alignment
as a generic helper.

But I get your point. For example, mm_get_unmapped_area_aligned() can
still fallback to mm_get_unmapped_area_vmflags() automatically.

That was ok, however that loses some flexibility when the caller wants to
try with different alignments, exactly like above: currently, it was trying
to do a first attempt of PUD mapping then fallback to PMD if that fails.

Indeed I don't know whether such fallback would help in our unit tests. But
logically speaking we'll need to look into every arch's va allocator to
know when it might fail with bigger allocations, and if PUD fails it's
still sensible one wants to retry with PMD if available. From that POV, we
don't want to immediately fallback to 4K if 1G fails.

Thanks,

--
Peter Xu