Re: [patch 2/6] mmu_notifier: Callbacks to invalidate address ranges

Jack Steiner
2008-01-30T14:43:33Z

On Wed, Jan 30, 2008 at 02:37:20PM +0100, Andrea Arcangeli wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 29, 2008 at 06:28:05PM -0600, Jack Steiner wrote:
> > On Tue, Jan 29, 2008 at 04:20:50PM -0800, Christoph Lameter wrote:
> > > On Wed, 30 Jan 2008, Andrea Arcangeli wrote:
> > >
> > > > > invalidate_range after populate allows access to memory for which ptes
> > > > > were zapped and the refcount was released.
> > > >
> > > > The last refcount is released by the invalidate_range itself.
> > >
> > > That is true for your implementation and to address Robin's issues. Jack:
> > > Is that true for the GRU?
> >
> > I'm not sure I understand the question. The GRU never (currently) takes
> > a reference on a page. It has no mechanism for tracking pages that
> > were exported to the external TLBs.
>
> If you don't have a pin, then things like invalidate_range in
> remap_file_pages can't be safe as writes through the external TLBs can
> keep going on pages in the freelist. For you to be safe w/o a
> page-pin, you need to return in the direction of invalidate_page
> inside ptep_clear_flush (or anyway before
> page_cache_release/__free_page/put_page...). You're generally not safe
> with any invalidate_range that may run after the page pointed by the
> pte has been freed (or can be freed by the VM anytime because of being
> unpinned cache).

Yuck....

I see what you mean. I need to review to mail to see why this changed
but in the original discussions with Christoph, the invalidate_range
callouts were suppose to be made BEFORE the pages were put on the freelist.

--- jack