Re: [RFC PATCH] s390: mm: rmap: Transfer storage key to struct page under the page lock

Martin Schwidefsky
2012-04-17T13:02:37Z

On Tue, 17 Apr 2012 13:29:25 +0100
Mel Gorman <mgorman@suse.de> wrote:

> On Mon, Apr 16, 2012 at 05:50:40PM +0200, Martin Schwidefsky wrote:
> > On Mon, 16 Apr 2012 15:14:23 +0100
> > Mel Gorman <mgorman@suse.de> wrote:
> >
> > > This patch is horribly ugly and there has to be a better way of doing
> > > it. I'm looking for suggestions on what s390 can do here that is not
> > > painful or broken.
> > >
> > > However, s390 needs a better way of guarding against
> > > PageSwapCache pages being removed from the radix tree while set_page_dirty()
> > > is being called. The patch would be marginally better if in the PageSwapCache
> > > case we simply tried to lock once and in the contended case just fail to
> > > propogate the storage key. I lack familiarity with the s390 architecture
> > > to be certain if this is safe or not. Suggestions on a better fix?
> >
> > One though that crossed my mind is that maybe a better approach would be
> > to move the page_test_and_clear_dirty check out of page_remove_rmap.
> > What we need to look out for are code sequences of the form:
> >
> > if (pte_dirty(pte))
> > set_page_dirty(page);
> > ...
> > page_remove_rmap(page);
> >
> > There are four of those as far as I can see: in try_to_unmap_one,
> > try_to_unmap_cluster, zap_pte, and zap_pte_range.
> >
> > A valid implementation for s390 would be to test and clear the changed
> > bit in the storage key for every of those pte_dirty() calls.
> >
> > if (pte_dirty(pte) || page_test_and_clear_dirty(page))
> > set_page_dirty(page);
> > ...
> > page_remove_rmap(page); /* w/o page_test_clear_dirty */
> >
>
> In the zap_pte_range() case at least, pte_dirty() is only being checked
> for !PageAnon pages so if we took this approach we would miss
> PageSwapCache pages. If we added the check then the same problem is hit
> and we'd need additional logic there for s390 to drop the PTL, take the
> page lock and retry the operation. It'd still be ugly :(

Well if x86 can get away with ignoring PageSwapCache pages in zap_pte_range()
pages then s390 should be able to get away with it as well, no ?

--
blue skies,
Martin.

"Reality continues to ruin my life." - Calvin.