Hi Al, Here are four patches to provide support for extracting pages from an iov_iter, where such a thing makes sense, if you could take a look? The first couple of patches provide iov_iter general stuff: (1) Move the FOLL_* flags to linux/mm_types.h so that linux/uio.h can make use of them. (2) Add a function to list-only, get or pin pages from an iterator as a future replacement for iov_iter_get_pages*(). Pointers to the pages are placed into an array (which will get allocated if not provided) and, depending on the iterator type and direction, the pages will have a ref or a pin get on them, or left untouched (on the assumption that the caller manages their lifetime). The determination is: UBUF/IOVEC + READ -> pin UBUF/IOVEC + WRITE -> get PIPE + READ -> list-only BVEC/XARRAY -> list-only Anything else -> EFAULT The function also returns an indication of which of "list only, get or pin" the extraction function did to aid in cleaning up (returning 0, FOLL_GET or FOLL_PIN as appropriate). [!] NOTE that this function is not marked EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL because it's intended as a replacement for iov_iter_get_pages*(), which is not itself marked _GPL. Then there are a couple of patches that add stuff to netfslib that I want to use there as well as in cifs: (3) Add a netfslib function to use (2) to extract pages from an ITER_IOBUF or ITER_UBUF iterator into an ITER_BVEC iterator. This will get or pin the pages as appropriate. (4) Add a netfslib function to extract pages from an iterator that's of type ITER_UBUF/IOVEC/BVEC/KVEC/XARRAY and add them to a scatterlist. The function in (2) is used for a UBUF and IOVEC iterators, so those need cleaning up afterwards. BVEC and XARRAY iterators are ungot and unpinned and may be rendered into elements that span multiple pages, for example if large folios are present. Changes: ======== ver #2) - Rolled the extraction cleanup mode query function into the extraction function, returning the indication through the argument list. - Fixed patch 4 (extract to scatterlist) to actually use the new extraction API. I've pushed the patches here also: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/dhowells/linux-fs.git/log/?h=iov-extract David Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/166697254399.61150.1256557652599252121.stgit@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/ # rfc Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/166722777223.2555743.162508599131141451.stgit@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/ # rfc Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/166732024173.3186319.18204305072070871546.stgit@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/ # rfc Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/166869687556.3723671.10061142538708346995.stgit@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/ # rfc --- David Howells (4): mm: Move FOLL_* defs to mm_types.h iov_iter: Add a function to extract a page list from an iterator netfs: Add a function to extract a UBUF or IOVEC into a BVEC iterator netfs: Add a function to extract an iterator into a scatterlist fs/netfs/Makefile | 1 + fs/netfs/iterator.c | 367 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ include/linux/mm.h | 74 -------- include/linux/mm_types.h | 73 ++++++++ include/linux/netfs.h | 7 + include/linux/uio.h | 4 + lib/iov_iter.c | 350 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ mm/vmalloc.c | 1 + 8 files changed, 803 insertions(+), 74 deletions(-) create mode 100644 fs/netfs/iterator.c