On Tue 03-07-18 12:19:11, Kirill A. Shutemov wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 03, 2018 at 10:27:18AM +0200, Michal Hocko wrote:
> > On Tue 03-07-18 11:12:05, Kirill A. Shutemov wrote:
> > > On Mon, Jul 02, 2018 at 02:49:28PM +0200, Michal Hocko wrote:
> > > > On Mon 02-07-18 15:33:50, Kirill A. Shutemov wrote:
> > > > [...]
> > > > > I probably miss the explanation somewhere, but what's wrong with allowing
> > > > > other thread to re-populate the VMA?
> > > >
> > > > We have discussed that earlier and it boils down to how is racy access
> > > > to munmap supposed to behave. Right now we have either the original
> > > > content or SEGV. If we allow to simply madvise_dontneed before real
> > > > unmap we could get a new page as well. There might be (quite broken I
> > > > would say) user space code that would simply corrupt data silently that
> > > > way.
> > >
> > > Okay, so we add a lot of complexity to accommodate broken userspace that
> > > may or may not exist. Is it right? :)
> >
> > I would really love to do the most simple and obious thing
> >
> > diff --git a/mm/mmap.c b/mm/mmap.c
> > index 336bee8c4e25..86ffb179c3b5 100644
> > --- a/mm/mmap.c
> > +++ b/mm/mmap.c
> > @@ -2811,6 +2811,8 @@ EXPORT_SYMBOL(vm_munmap);
> > SYSCALL_DEFINE2(munmap, unsigned long, addr, size_t, len)
> > {
> > profile_munmap(addr);
> > + if (len > LARGE_NUMBER)
> > + do_madvise(addr, len, MADV_DONTNEED);
> > return vm_munmap(addr, len);
> > }
> >
> > but the argument that current semantic of good data or SEGV on
> > racing threads is no longer preserved sounds valid to me. Remember
> > optimizations shouldn't eat your data. How do we ensure that we won't
> > corrupt data silently?
>
> +linux-api
>
> Frankly, I don't see change in semantics here.
>
> Code that has race between munmap() and page fault would get intermittent
> SIGSEGV before and after the approach with simple MADV_DONTNEED.
prior to this patch you would either get an expected content (if you
win the race) or SEGV otherwise. With the above change you would get a
third state - a fresh new page (zero page) if you lost the race half
way. That sounds like a change of a long term semantic.
How much that matters is of course a question. Userspace is known to do
the most unexpected things you never even dreamed of.
--
Michal Hocko
SUSE Labs
