Re: [PATCH 19/19] Documentation/vm: add pin_user_pages.rst

John Hubbard
2019-11-01T00:48:52Z

On 10/31/19 4:49 PM, Ira Weiny wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 30, 2019 at 03:49:30PM -0700, John Hubbard wrote:
...
>> +TODO: There is also a special case when the pages are DAX pages: in addition to
>> +the above flags, the caller needs something like a layout lease on the
>> +associated file. This is yet to be implemented. When it is implemented, it's
>> +expected that the lease will be a prerequisite to setting FOLL_LONGTERM.
>
> For now we probably want to leave this note out until we figure out how this is
> going to work. Best to say something like:
>
> Some pages, such as DAX pages, can't be pinned with longterm pins and will
> fail.
>

OK, I have this wording queued up for the v2 patch:

NOTE: Some pages, such as DAX pages, cannot be pinned with longterm pins. That's
because DAX pages do not have a separate page cache, and so "pinning" implies
locking down file system blocks, which is not (yet) supported in that way.

thanks,

John Hubbard
NVIDIA