Re: [PATCH 02/13] mm/munlock: delete FOLL_MLOCK and FOLL_POPULATE

Vlastimil Babka
2022-02-10T11:35:24Z

On 2/6/22 22:32, Hugh Dickins wrote:
> If counting page mlocks, we must not double-count: follow_page_pte() can
> tell if a page has already been Mlocked or not, but cannot tell if a pte
> has already been counted or not: that will have to be done when the pte
> is mapped in (which lru_cache_add_inactive_or_unevictable() already tracks
> for new anon pages, but there's no such tracking yet for others).
>
> Delete all the FOLL_MLOCK code - faulting in the missing pages will do
> all that is necessary, without special mlock_vma_page() calls from here.
>
> But then FOLL_POPULATE turns out to serve no purpose - it was there so
> that its absence would tell faultin_page() not to faultin page when
> setting up VM_LOCKONFAULT areas; but if there's no special work needed
> here for mlock, then there's no work at all here for VM_LOCKONFAULT.
>
> Have I got that right? I've not looked into the history, but see that
> FOLL_POPULATE goes back before VM_LOCKONFAULT: did it serve a different
> purpose before? Ah, yes, it was used to skip the old stack guard page.
>
> And is it intentional that COW is not broken on existing pages when
> setting up a VM_LOCKONFAULT area? I can see that being argued either
> way, and have no reason to disagree with current behaviour.

Yeah I think it's consistent with the two usecases stated for VM_LOCKONFAULT:
https://lore.kernel.org/all/1441720742-7803-1-git-send-email-emunson@akamai.com/

> Signed-off-by: Hugh Dickins <hughd@google.com>

Acked-by: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz>