Re: [LSF/MM/BPF TOPIC][RFC PATCH v4 00/27] Private Memory Nodes (w/ Compressed RAM)

Gregory Price
2026-03-19T14:30:02Z

On Tue, Mar 17, 2026 at 02:05:53PM +0100, David Hildenbrand (Arm) wrote:
> On 2/23/26 17:08, Gregory Price wrote:
> > On Mon, Feb 23, 2026 at 09:54:55AM -0500, Gregory Price wrote:
> >> On Mon, Feb 23, 2026 at 02:07:15PM +0100, David Hildenbrand (Arm) wrote:
> >>>
> >>> I'm concerned about adding more special-casing (similar to what we already
> >>> added for ZONE_DEVICE) all over the place.
> >>>
> >>> Like the whole folio_managed_() stuff in mprotect.c
> >>>
> >>> Having that said, sounds like a reasonable topic to discuss.
> >>>
> >>
> >> Another option would be to add the hook to vma_wants_writenotify()
> >> instead of the page table code - and mask MM_CP_TRY_CHANGE_WRITABLE.
> >>
> >
> > scratch all this - existing hooks exist for exactly this purpose:
> >
> > can_change_[pte|pmd]_writable()
> >
> > Surprised I missed this.
> >
> > I can clean this up to remove it from the page table walks.
>
> Sorry for the late reply -- sounds like we can handle this cleaner.
>
> But I am wondering: why is this even required?
>
> Is it just for "Services that intercept write faults (e.g., for
> promotion tracking) need PTEs to stay read-only"
>
> But that promotion tracking sounds like some orthogonal work to me. What
> am I missing that this is required in this patch set? (is it just for
> the special compressed RAM bits?)
>

Yes, this was specific to the compressed ram bits - it allows for a
service to control where/when writes to the device can happen. In this
case, I've limited writes to just the demotion step. (Although I have
since realized i need to not allow file-backed memory to be demoted).

There may be a better way to do this, but also it may very well be the
case that such a hook is just a bridge too far and isn't wanted. I think
this debate is warranted.

~Gregory