Re: [PATCH v7 01/21] lib/scatterlist: add flag for indicating P2PDMA segments in an SGL

Logan Gunthorpe
2022-06-29T18:24:57Z

On 2022-06-29 12:02, Robin Murphy wrote:
> On 2022-06-29 16:39, Logan Gunthorpe wrote:
>> On 2022-06-29 03:05, Robin Murphy wrote:
>>> On 2022-06-15 17:12, Logan Gunthorpe wrote:
>>> Does this serve any useful purpose? If a page is determined to be device
>>> memory, it's not going to suddenly stop being device memory, and if the
>>> underlying sg is recycled to point elsewhere then sg_assign_page() will
>>> still (correctly) clear this flag anyway. Trying to reason about this
>>> beyond superficial API symmetry - i.e. why exactly would a caller need
>>> to call it, and what would the implications be of failing to do so -
>>> seems to lead straight to confusion.
>>>
>>> In fact I'd be inclined to have sg_assign_page() be responsible for
>>> setting the flag automatically as well, and thus not need
>>> sg_dma_mark_bus_address() either, however I can see the argument for
>>> doing it this way round to not entangle the APIs too much, so I don't
>>> have any great objection to that.
>>
>> Yes, I think you misunderstand what this is for. The SG_DMA_BUS_ADDDRESS
>> flag doesn't mark the segment for the page, but for the dma address. It
>> cannot be set in sg_assign_page() seeing it's not a property of the page
>> but a property of the dma_address in the sgl.
>>
>> It's not meant for use by regular SG users, it's only meant for use
>> inside DMA mapping implementations. The purpose is to know whether a
>> given dma_address in the SGL is a bus address or regular memory because
>> the two different types must be unmapped differently. We can't rely on
>> the page because, as you know, many dma_map_sg() the dma_address entry
>> in the sgl does not map to the same memory as the page. Or to put it
>> another way: is_pci_p2pdma_page(sg->page) does not imply that
>> sg->dma_address points to a bus address.
>>
>> Does that make sense?
>
> Ah, you're quite right, in trying to take in the whole series at once
> first thing in the morning I did fail to properly grasp that detail, so
> indeed the sg_assign_page() thing couldn't possibly work, but as I said
> that's fine anyway. I still think the lifecycle management is a bit off
> though - equivalently, a bus address doesn't stop being a bus address,
> so it would seem appropriate to update this flag appropriately whenever
> sg_dma_address() is assigned to, and not when it isn't.

Yes, that's pretty much the way the code is now. The only two places
sg_dma_mark_bus_address() is called are in the two pci_p2pdma helpers
that set the dma address to the bus address. The lines before both calls
set the dma_address and dma_len.

Logan