Re: [PATCH 2/2] mm: set PG_dma_pinned on get_user_pages*()

Dan Williams
2018-06-18T19:21:54Z

On Mon, Jun 18, 2018 at 11:14 AM, John Hubbard <jhubbard@nvidia.com> wrote:
> On 06/18/2018 10:56 AM, Dan Williams wrote:
>> On Mon, Jun 18, 2018 at 10:50 AM, John Hubbard <jhubbard@nvidia.com> wrote:
>>> On 06/18/2018 01:12 AM, Christoph Hellwig wrote:
>>>> On Sun, Jun 17, 2018 at 01:28:18PM -0700, John Hubbard wrote:
>>>>> Yes. However, my thinking was: get_user_pages() can become a way to indicate that
>>>>> these pages are going to be treated specially. In particular, the caller
>>>>> does not really want or need to support certain file operations, while the
>>>>> page is flagged this way.
>>>>>
>>>>> If necessary, we could add a new API call.
>>>>
>>>> That API call is called get_user_pages_longterm.
>>>
>>> OK...I had the impression that this was just semi-temporary API for dax, but
>>> given that it's an exported symbol, I guess it really is here to stay.
>>
>> The plan is to go back and provide api changes that bypass
>> get_user_page_longterm() for RDMA. However, for VFIO and others, it's
>> not clear what we could do. In the VFIO case the guest would need to
>> be prepared handle the revocation.
>
> OK, let's see if I understand that plan correctly:
>
> 1. Change RDMA users (this could be done entirely in the various device drivers'
> code, unless I'm overlooking something) to use mmu notifiers, and to do their
> DMA to/from non-pinned pages.

The problem with this approach is surprising the RDMA drivers with
notifications of teardowns. It's the RDMA userspace applications that
need the notification, and it likely needs to be explicit opt-in, at
least for the non-ODP drivers.

> 2. Return early from get_user_pages_longterm, if the memory is...marked for
> RDMA? (How? Same sort of page flag that I'm floating here, or something else?)
> That would avoid the problem with pinned pages getting their buffer heads
> removed--by disallowing the pinning. Makes sense.

Well, right now the RDMA workaround is DAX specific and it seems we
need to generalize it for the page-cache case. One thought is to have
try_to_unmap() take it's own reference and wait for the page reference
count to drop to one so that the truncate path knows the page is
dma-idle and disconnected from the page cache, but I have not looked
at the details.

> Also, is there anything I can help with here, so that things can happen sooner?

I do think we should explore a page flag for pages that are "long
term" pinned. Michal asked for something along these lines at LSF / MM
so that the core-mm can give up on pages that the kernel has lost
lifetime control. Michal, did I capture your ask correctly?