Re: [patch 3/3] mm: fault handler to replace nopage and populate

Nick Piggin
2006-10-09T11:19:09Z

On Mon, Oct 09, 2006 at 09:10:13PM +1000, Benjamin Herrenschmidt wrote:
>
> > Yep, I see. You just need to be careful about the PFNMAP logic, so
> > the VM knows whether the pte is backed by a struct page or not.
>
> I still need to properly get my head around that one. I can't easily
> change the VMA during the "switch" but I can tweak the flags on the
> first nopage after one...

You'll want to clear VM_PFNMAP after unmapping all pages from it, before
switching to struct page backing.

>
> > And going the pageless route means that you must disallow MAP_PRIVATE
> > PROT_WRITE mappings, I trust that isn't a problem for you?
>
> Should not but I need to look more closely.

If you do need to, then if your pfns are contiguous in virtual memory,
and you can spare vm_pgoff, then you can use remap_pfn_range's method
of setting vm_pgoff to the first pfn.

I can add a bit of sanity checking for that as well.

> > + /* Ok, finally just insert the thing.. */
> > + set_pte_at(mm, addr, pte, pfn_pte(pfn, vma->vm_page_prot));
> > +
> > + vma->vm_flags |= VM_PFNMAP;
> > + retval = 0;
> > +out_unlock:
> > + pte_unmap_unlock(pte, ptl);
> > +out:
> > + return retval;
> > +}
> > +EXPORT_SYMBOL(vm_insert_pfn);
>
> It also needs update_mmu_cache() I suppose.

Hmm, but it might not be called from a pagefault. Can we get away
with not calling it? Or is it required by some architectures?