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Date: Wed, 26 Oct 2016 10:39:13 +0100
From: Lorenzo Stoakes <lstoakes@gmail.com>
To: Michal Hocko <mhocko@kernel.org>
Cc: linux-mm@kvack.org, Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>,
        Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>, Hugh Dickins <hughd@google.com>,
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        Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>,
        Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@redhat.com>,
        Radim =?utf-8?B?S3LEjW3DocWZ?= <rkrcmar@redhat.com>,
        kvm@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] mm: remove unnecessary __get_user_pages_unlocked() calls
Message-ID: <20161026093913.GA12814@lucifer>
References: <20161025233609.5601-1-lstoakes@gmail.com>
 <20161025234631.GA5946@lucifer>
 <20161026091542.GD18382@dhcp22.suse.cz>
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On Wed, Oct 26, 2016 at 11:15:43AM +0200, Michal Hocko wrote:
> On Wed 26-10-16 00:46:31, Lorenzo Stoakes wrote:
> > The holdout for unexporting __get_user_pages_unlocked() is its invocation in
> > mm/process_vm_access.c: process_vm_rw_single_vec(), as this definitely _does_
> > seem to invoke VM_FAULT_RETRY behaviour which get_user_pages_remote() will not
> > trigger if we were to replace it with the latter.
>
> I am not sure I understand. Prior to 1e9877902dc7e this used
> get_user_pages_unlocked. What prevents us from reintroducing it with
> FOLL_REMOVE which was meant to be added by the above commit?
>
> Or am I missing your point?

The issue isn't the flags being passed, rather that in this case:

a. Replacing __get_user_pages_unlocked() with get_user_pages_unlocked() won't
   work as the latter assumes task = current and mm = current->mm but
   process_vm_rw_single_vec() needs to pass different task, mm.

b. Moving to get_user_pages_remote() _will_ allow us to pass different task, mm
   but won't however match existing behaviour precisely, since
   __get_user_pages_unlocked() acquires mmap_sem then passes a pointer to a
   local 'locked' variable to __get_user_pages_locked() which allows
   VM_FAULT_RETRY to trigger.

The main issue I had here was not being sure whether we care about the
VM_FAULT_RETRY functionality being used here or not, if we don't care then we
can just move to get_user_pages_remote(), otherwise perhaps this should be left
alone or maybe we need to consider adjusting the API to allow for remote access
with VM_FAULT_RETRY functionality.