Re: [PATCH 01/11] mm/mremap: introduce more mergeable mremap via MREMAP_RELOCATE_ANON

Harry Yoo
2025-06-17T06:39:07Z

On Mon, Jun 16, 2025 at 10:58:28PM +0200, David Hildenbrand wrote:
> On 09.06.25 15:26, Lorenzo Stoakes wrote:
> > When mremap() moves a mapping around in memory, it goes to great lengths to
> > avoid having to walk page tables as this is expensive and
> > time-consuming.
> >
> > Rather, if the VMA was faulted (that is vma->anon_vma != NULL), the virtual
> > page offset stored in the VMA at vma->vm_pgoff will remain the same, as
> > well all the folio indexes pointed at the associated anon_vma object.
> >
> > This means the VMA and page tables can simply be moved and this affects the
> > change (and if we can move page tables at a higher page table level, this
> > is even faster).
> >
> > While this is efficient, it does lead to big problems with VMA merging - in
> > essence it causes faulted anonymous VMAs to not be mergeable under many
> > circumstances once moved.
> >
> > This is limiting and leads to both a proliferation of unreclaimable,
> > unmovable kernel metadata (VMAs, anon_vma's, anon_vma_chain's) and has an
> > impact on further use of mremap(), which has a requirement that the VMA
> > moved (which can also be a partial range within a VMA) may span only a
> > single VMA.
> >
> > This makes the mergeability or not of VMAs in effect a uAPI concern.
> >
> > In some use cases, users may wish to accept the overhead of actually going
> > to the trouble of updating VMAs and folios to affect mremap() moves. Let's
> > provide them with the choice.
> >
> > This patch add a new MREMAP_RELOCATE_ANON flag to do just that, which
> > attempts to perform such an operation. If it is unable to do so, it cleanly
> > falls back to the usual method.
> >
> > It carefully takes the rmap locks such that at no time will a racing rmap
> > user encounter incorrect or missing VMAs.
> >
> > It is also designed to interact cleanly with the existing mremap() error
> > fallback mechanism (inverting the remap should the page table move fail).
> >
> > Also, if we could merge cleanly without such a change, we do so, avoiding
> > the overhead of the operation if it is not required.
> >
> > In the instance that no merge may occur when the move is performed, we
> > still perform the folio and VMA updates to ensure that future mremap() or
> > mprotect() calls will result in merges.
> >
> > In this implementation, we simply give up if we encounter large folios. A
> > subsequent commit will extend the functionality to allow for these cases.
> >
> > We restrict this flag to purely anonymous memory only.
> >
> > we separate out the vma_had_uncowed_parents() helper function for checking
> > in should_relocate_anon() and introduce a new function
> > vma_maybe_has_shared_anon_folios() which combines a check against this and
> > any forked child anon_vma's.
> >
> > We carefully check for pinned folios in case a caller who holds a pin might
> > make assumptions about index, mapping fields which we are about to
> > manipulate.
>
> Som quick feedback, I did not yet digest everything.
>
> > @@ -1134,6 +1380,67 @@ static void unmap_source_vma(struct vma_remap_struct *vrm)
> > pmc.new = new_vma;
> > + if (relocate_anon) {
> > + lock_new_anon_vma(new_vma);
> > + pmc.relocate_locked = new_vma;
> > +
> > + if (!relocate_anon_folios(&pmc, /* undo= */false)) {
> > + unsigned long start = new_vma->vm_start;
> > + unsigned long size = new_vma->vm_end - start;
> > +
> > + /* Undo if fails. */
> > + relocate_anon_folios(&pmc, /* undo= */true);
>
> You'd assume this cannot fail, but I think it can: imagine concurrent
> GUP-fast ...

Oops, that sounds really bad.

> I really wish we can find a way to not require the fallback.

Maybe split the VMA at the point where it fails, instead of undo?

--
Cheers,
Harry / Hyeonggon