Re: [PATCH] mmu notifiers #v8

Andrea Arcangeli
2008-03-03T12:52:15Z

On Mon, Mar 03, 2008 at 04:29:34AM +0100, Nick Piggin wrote:
> to something I prefer. Others may not, but I'll post them for debate
> anyway.

Sure, thanks!

> > I didn't drop invalidate_page, because invalidate_range_begin/end
> > would be slower for usages like KVM/GRU (we don't need a begin/end
> > there because where invalidate_page is called, the VM holds a
> > reference on the page). do_wp_page should also use invalidate_page
> > since it can free the page after dropping the PT lock without losing
> > any performance (that's not true for the places where invalidate_range
> > is called).
>
> I'm still not completely happy with this. I had a very quick look
> at the GRU driver, but I don't see why it can't be implemented
> more like the regular TLB model, and have TLB insertions depend on
> the linux pte, and do invalidates _after_ restricting permissions
> to the pte.
>
> Ie. I'd still like to get rid of invalidate_range_begin, and get
> rid of invalidate calls from places where permissions are relaxed.

_begin exists because by the time _end is called, the VM already
dropped the reference on the page. This way we can do a single
invalidate no matter how large the range is. I don't see ways to
remove _begin while still invoking _end a single time for the whole
range.

> If we can agree on the API, then I don't see any reason why it can't
> go into 2.6.25, unless someome wants more time to review it (but
> 2.6.25 release should be quite far away still so there should be quite
> a bit of time).

Cool! ;)