Re: [PATCH 1/4] mm: Trial do_wp_page() simplification

Gal Pressman
2021-02-03T12:48:42Z

> On Tue, Feb 02, 2021 at 12:05:36PM -0500, Peter Xu wrote:
>
>> > Gal, you could also MADV_DONTFORK this range if you are explicitly
>> > allocating them via special mmap.
>>
>> Yeah I wanted to mention this one too but I just forgot when reply: the issue
>> thread previously pasted smells like some people would like to drop
>> MADV_DONTFORK, but if it's able to still be applied I don't know why
>> not..
>
> I want to drop the MADV_DONTFORK for dynamic data memory allocated by
> the application layers (eg with malloc) without knowledge of how they
> will be used.
>
> This case is a buffer internal to the communication system that we
> know at allocation time how it will be used; so an explicit,
> deliberate, MADV_DONTFORK is fine

We are referring to libfabric's bounce buffers, correct?
Libfabric could be considered as the "app" here, it's not clear why these
buffers should be DONTFORK'd before ibv_reg_mr() but others don't.

Anyway, it should be simple enough to madvise them after allocation, although I
think it's part of libfabric's generic code (which isn't necessarily used on
top of rdma-core).

I'll take this discussion with the libfabric guys.
Thanks Peter and Jason.