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From: Daniel Palmer <daniel@thingy.jp>
Cc: akpm@linux-foundation.org, liam@infradead.org, ljs@kernel.org,
	vbabka@kernel.org, jannh@google.com, pfalcato@suse.de,
	linux-mm@kvack.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
	Daniel Palmer <daniel@thingy.jp>
Subject: [RFC PATCH] mm/nommu: Implement just enough vmap that compressed erofs can be mounted
Date: Thu, 21 May 2026 01:34:38 +0900	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20260520163442.1099667-1-daniel@thingy.jp> (raw)

This implements a very poor imitation of vmap that works just
enough that compressed erofs filesystems can be mounted on nommu
machines. Right now compressed erofs filesystems trigger a BUG()
on nommu due to this missing.

This is awful, doesn't work like real vmap etc,.. but if you
really cared about stuff working you'd have an MMU I guess?

Signed-off-by: Daniel Palmer <daniel@thingy.jp>
---

Did I miss anything massive that is going to come back and bite me?
Maybe it would have made more sense just to change the erofs
code so on !CONFIG_MMU it doesn't use vmap?

Why:

I'm attempting to get a kernel and userspace into ~3.5MB
of memory without an MMU. The kernel is just a bit over
2MB so I don't have much left.

I've constructed a userspace that is completely made
up of nolibc binaries and with a bit of tweaking and all
the debugging turned off it fits into a ~64KB erofs.

 mm/nommu.c | 133 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++---
 1 file changed, 127 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-)

diff --git a/mm/nommu.c b/mm/nommu.c
index ed3934bc2de4..a7dbb67b3b69 100644
--- a/mm/nommu.c
+++ b/mm/nommu.c
@@ -19,6 +19,7 @@
 #include <linux/export.h>
 #include <linux/mm.h>
 #include <linux/sched/mm.h>
+#include <linux/hash.h>
 #include <linux/mman.h>
 #include <linux/swap.h>
 #include <linux/file.h>
@@ -53,6 +54,18 @@ static struct kmem_cache *vm_region_jar;
 struct rb_root nommu_region_tree = RB_ROOT;
 DECLARE_RWSEM(nommu_region_sem);
 
+/* Tracking for our "poor man's" vmap */
+#define VMAP_HASH_BITS  6
+static struct hlist_head vmap_hash[1 << VMAP_HASH_BITS];
+static DEFINE_SPINLOCK(vmap_lock);
+
+struct nommu_vmap_area {
+	struct hlist_node node;
+	struct page **pages;
+	unsigned int count;
+	void *addr;
+};
+
 const struct vm_operations_struct generic_file_vm_ops = {
 };
 
@@ -305,29 +318,137 @@ void *vmalloc_32_user_noprof(unsigned long size)
 }
 EXPORT_SYMBOL(vmalloc_32_user_noprof);
 
-void *vmap(struct page **pages, unsigned int count, unsigned long flags, pgprot_t prot)
+static bool vmap_needs_bounce(struct page **pages, unsigned int count)
 {
-	BUG();
+	unsigned long pfn = page_to_pfn(pages[0]);
+	unsigned int i;
+
+	for (i = 1; i < count; i++)
+		if (page_to_pfn(pages[i]) != pfn + i)
+			return true;
+
+	return false;
+}
+
+static inline unsigned int vmap_key(const void *addr)
+{
+	return hash_ptr(addr, VMAP_HASH_BITS);
+}
+
+static struct nommu_vmap_area *vmap_area_find(const void *addr)
+{
+	struct nommu_vmap_area *va;
+
+	hlist_for_each_entry(va, &vmap_hash[vmap_key(addr)], node)
+		if (va->addr == addr)
+			return va;
+
 	return NULL;
 }
+
+static void *nommu_vmap_map(struct page **pages, unsigned int count)
+{
+	struct nommu_vmap_area *va __free(kfree) = NULL;
+	struct page **_pages __free(kfree) = NULL;
+	void *copy __free(kvfree) = NULL;
+	unsigned int i;
+
+	va = kmalloc_obj(struct nommu_vmap_area);
+	if (!va)
+		return NULL;
+
+	if (vmap_needs_bounce(pages, count)) {
+		copy = kvmalloc_array(count, PAGE_SIZE, GFP_KERNEL);
+		if (!copy)
+			return NULL;
+
+		_pages = kmemdup(pages, count * sizeof(*pages), GFP_KERNEL);
+		if (!_pages)
+			return NULL;
+
+		/*
+		 * Copy the original contents of the pages into the new
+		 * pages to pretend we virtually mapped them.
+		 */
+		for (i = 0; i < count; i++) {
+			void *p = copy + (i * PAGE_SIZE);
+
+			memcpy(p, page_address(pages[i]), PAGE_SIZE);
+		}
+
+		va->addr = no_free_ptr(copy);
+		va->pages = no_free_ptr(_pages);
+	} else {
+		va->addr = page_address(pages[0]);
+		va->pages = NULL;
+	}
+
+	va->count = count;
+
+	scoped_guard(spinlock, &vmap_lock) {
+		hlist_add_head(&va->node,
+			       &vmap_hash[vmap_key(va->addr)]);
+	}
+
+	return no_free_ptr(va)->addr;
+}
+
+static void nommu_vmap_unmap(const void *addr)
+{
+	struct nommu_vmap_area *va;
+	unsigned int i;
+
+	scoped_guard(spinlock, &vmap_lock) {
+		va = vmap_area_find(addr);
+		if (va)
+			hlist_del(&va->node);
+	}
+
+	if (WARN_ON_ONCE(!va))
+		return;
+
+	if (va->pages) {
+		/*
+		 * Write back the new contents of the pages to
+		 * the original ones, this is a waste of time if
+		 * the pages weren't written to but we can't tell.
+		 */
+		for (i = 0; i < va->count; i++) {
+			const void *src = addr + (i * PAGE_SIZE);
+			void *dst = page_address(va->pages[i]);
+
+			memcpy(dst, src, PAGE_SIZE);
+		}
+
+		kvfree(va->addr);
+		kfree(va->pages);
+	}
+
+	kfree(va);
+}
+
+void *vmap(struct page **pages, unsigned int count,
+	   unsigned long flags, pgprot_t prot)
+{
+	return nommu_vmap_map(pages, count);
+}
 EXPORT_SYMBOL(vmap);
 
 void vunmap(const void *addr)
 {
-	BUG();
+	nommu_vmap_unmap(addr);
 }
 EXPORT_SYMBOL(vunmap);
 
 void *vm_map_ram(struct page **pages, unsigned int count, int node)
 {
-	BUG();
-	return NULL;
+	return nommu_vmap_map(pages, count);
 }
 EXPORT_SYMBOL(vm_map_ram);
 
 void vm_unmap_ram(const void *mem, unsigned int count)
 {
-	BUG();
+	nommu_vmap_unmap(mem);
 }
 EXPORT_SYMBOL(vm_unmap_ram);
 
-- 
2.53.0



             reply	other threads:[~2026-05-20 16:36 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 5+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2026-05-20 16:34 Daniel Palmer [this message]
2026-05-20 17:00 ` [RFC PATCH] mm/nommu: Implement just enough vmap that compressed erofs can be mounted Pedro Falcato
2026-05-20 17:05 ` Lorenzo Stoakes
2026-05-20 17:22   ` Daniel Palmer
2026-05-20 19:45     ` Pedro Falcato

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