Re: [RFC PATCH 0/4] KVM: x86/mmu: Rework marking folios dirty/accessed

David Hildenbrand
2024-04-05T06:53:55Z

On 05.04.24 00:02, Sean Christopherson wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 04, 2024, David Hildenbrand wrote:
>> On 04.04.24 19:31, Sean Christopherson wrote:
>>> On Thu, Apr 04, 2024, David Hildenbrand wrote:
>>>> On 04.04.24 00:19, Sean Christopherson wrote:
>>>>> Hmm, we essentially already have an mmu_notifier today, since secondary MMUs need
>>>>> to be invalidated before consuming dirty status. Isn't the end result essentially
>>>>> a sane FOLL_TOUCH?
>>>>
>>>> Likely. As stated in my first mail, FOLL_TOUCH is a bit of a mess right now.
>>>>
>>>> Having something that makes sure the writable PTE/PMD is dirty (or
>>>> alternatively sets it dirty), paired with MMU notifiers notifying on any
>>>> mkclean would be one option that would leave handling how to handle dirtying
>>>> of folios completely to the core. It would behave just like a CPU writing to
>>>> the page table, which would set the pte dirty.
>>>>
>>>> Of course, if frequent clearing of the dirty PTE/PMD bit would be a problem
>>>> (like we discussed for the accessed bit), that would not be an option. But
>>>> from what I recall, only clearing the PTE/PMD dirty bit is rather rare.
>>>
>>> And AFAICT, all cases already invalidate secondary MMUs anyways, so if anything
>>> it would probably be a net positive, e.g. the notification could more precisely
>>> say that SPTEs need to be read-only, not blasted away completely.
>>
>> As discussed, I think at least madvise_free_pte_range() wouldn't do that.
>
> I'm getting a bit turned around. Are you talking about what madvise_free_pte_range()
> would do in this future world, or what madvise_free_pte_range() does today? Because
> today, unless I'm really misreading the code, secondary MMUs are invalidated before
> the dirty bit is cleared.

Likely I missed it, sorry! I was talking about the possible future. :)

>
> mmu_notifier_range_init(&range, MMU_NOTIFY_CLEAR, 0, mm,
> range.start, range.end);
>
> lru_add_drain();
> tlb_gather_mmu(&tlb, mm);
> update_hiwater_rss(mm);
>
> mmu_notifier_invalidate_range_start(&range);
> tlb_start_vma(&tlb, vma);
> walk_page_range(vma->vm_mm, range.start, range.end,
> &madvise_free_walk_ops, &tlb);
> tlb_end_vma(&tlb, vma);
> mmu_notifier_invalidate_range_end(&range);
>

Indeed, we do setup the MMU notifier invalidation. We do the start/end
... I was looking for PTE notifications.

I spotted the set_pte_at(), not a set_pte_at_notify() like we do in
other code. Maybe that's not required here (digging through
documentation I'm still left clueless).

"
set_pte_at_notify() sets the pte _after_ running the notifier. This is
safe to start by updating the secondary MMUs, because the primary MMU
pte invalidate must have already happened with a ptep_clear_flush()
before set_pte_at_notify() has been invoked. ...
"

Absolutely unclear to me when we *must* to use it, or if it is. Likely
its a pure optimization when we're *changing* a PTE.

KSM and wp_page_copy() uses it with MMU_NOTIFY_CLEAR, when replacing the
mapped page by another page (or write-protecting an existing one).
__replace_page() uses it with __replace_page() when replacing the mapped
page. And migrate_vma_insert_page() uses it with MMU_NOTIFY_MIGRATE.

Other code (e.g., khugepaged) doesn't seem to use it as well.

... so I guess it's fine? Confusing.

--
Cheers,

David / dhildenb