Re: [PATCH v5 2/2] mm,thp: Add experimental config option RO_EXEC_FILEMAP_HUGE_FAULT_THP

[Matthew Wilcox <willy@infradead.org>]

On Tue, Sep 03, 2019 at 02:14:24PM +0200, Michal Hocko wrote:
> On Mon 02-09-19 03:23:41, William Kucharski wrote:
> > Add filemap_huge_fault() to attempt to satisfy page
> > faults on memory-mapped read-only text pages using THP when possible.
> 
> This deserves much more description of how the thing is implemented and
> expected to work. For one thing it is not really clear to me why you
> need CONFIG_RO_EXEC_FILEMAP_HUGE_FAULT_THP at all. You need a support
> from the filesystem anyway. So who is going to enable/disable this
> config?

There are definitely situations in which enabling this code will crash
the kernel.  But we want to get filesystems to a point where they can
start working on their support for large pages.  So our workaround is
to try to get the core pieces merged under a CONFIG_I_KNOW_WHAT_IM_DOING
flag and let people play with it.  Then continue to work on the core
to eliminate those places that are broken.

> I cannot really comment on fs specific parts but filemap_huge_fault
> sounds convoluted so much I cannot wrap my head around it. One thing
> stand out though. The generic filemap_huge_fault depends on ->readpage
> doing the right thing which sounds quite questionable to me. If nothing
> else  I would expect ->readpages to do the job.

Ah, that's because you're not a filesystem person ;-)  ->readpages is
really ->readahead.  It's a crappy interface and should be completely
redesigned.

Thanks for looking!