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Message-ID: <3f250c7105061922454dfe31ed@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 20 Jun 2005 01:45:04 -0400
From: Mauricio Lin <mauriciolin@gmail.com>
Reply-To: Mauricio Lin <mauriciolin@gmail.com>
To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: How to identify cow (copy-on-write) pages during kernel execution?
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Hi all,

I would like to know if there is a way to identify
struct page that is cow (copy-on-write).

The way I figured out to identify cow pages is when
copy-on-write happens. I mean I identify cow pages
inside the do_wp_page(), the function that handles
copy-on-write. I have checked do_no_page() as well.

I have included a field (is_cow) in the struct page to
identify cow page.

struct page {
     ...
     atomic_t is_cow;
}

But I wonder if it is possible to identify cow pages
before copy-on-write happens. So identify cow pages in
advance before any process tries to write to a cow
page.

I have checked the do_fork(), copy_process() and
copy_mm() function to try to identify cow pages during
the process creation, but no success. In copy_mm(),
just the mm (of current process) is provided to the
child process, but there are no references to struct
pages related to mm and its VMAs.

So when a page struct is considered a cow in the
kernel and its count variable is updated? Certainly
the counter page (page->_count) is updated when a page
is shared because of copy-on-write feature. 
How can I identify cow pages when it becomes cow? Is
there any feasible way to perform that?

BR,

Mauricio Lin.