Re: [PATCH v6 04/23] mm/uffd: PTE_MARKER_UFFD_WP

Peter Xu
2021-12-16T05:45:45Z

On Thu, Dec 16, 2021 at 04:18:50PM +1100, Alistair Popple wrote:
> On Monday, 15 November 2021 6:55:03 PM AEDT Peter Xu wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> > +/*
> > + * Returns true if this is a swap pte and was uffd-wp wr-protected in either
> > + * forms (pte marker or a normal swap pte), false otherwise.
> > + */
> > +static inline bool pte_swp_uffd_wp_any(pte_t pte)
> > +{
> > +#ifdef CONFIG_PTE_MARKER_UFFD_WP
> > + if (!is_swap_pte(pte))
> > + return false;
> > +
> > + if (pte_swp_uffd_wp(pte))
> > + return true;
>
> If I'm not mistaken normal swap uffd-wp ptes can still exist when
> CONFIG_PTE_MARKER_UFFD_WP=n so shouldn't this be outside the #ifdef protection?
>
> In fact we could drop the #ifdef entirely here as it is safe to call
> is_pte_marker_uffd_wp() without CONFIG_PTE_MARKER_UFFD_WP.

But if CONFIG_PTE_MARKER_UFFD_WP=n then it means we don't support file-backed
uffd-wp. The thing is pte_swp_uffd_wp_any() is only needed for file-backed..
Anonymous uffd-wp code never uses it.

In other words, pte_swp_uffd_wp() is indeed still a valid helper, however this
specific function (pte_swp_uffd_wp_any) may not really be necessary anymore.

Keeping the "#ifdef" could still help, imho, to generate clean code for direct
calls to pte_swp_uffd_wp_any() if someone wants to turn pte markers off,
e.g. we could still have chance to optimize below:

if (pte_swp_uffd_wp_any(pte) &&
!(zap_flags & ZAP_FLAG_DROP_MARKER))
set_huge_pte_at(mm, address, ptep,
make_pte_marker(PTE_MARKER_UFFD_WP));
else
huge_pte_clear(mm, address, ptep, sz);

Into:

huge_pte_clear(mm, address, ptep, sz);

with any decent compiler.

That's majorly why I still slightly prefer to keep it, and that's also one of
the major reason to have the config knob, imho.

Thanks,

--
Peter Xu