Re: [PATCH rfc 0/5] mm: allow mapping accounted kernel pages to userspace

[Shakeel Butt <shakeelb@google.com>]

On Fri, Sep 11, 2020 at 10:34 AM Shakeel Butt <shakeelb@google.com> wrote:
>
> On Thu, Sep 10, 2020 at 1:27 PM Roman Gushchin <guro@fb.com> wrote:
> >
> > Currently a non-slab kernel page which has been charged to a memory
> > cgroup can't be mapped to userspace. The underlying reason is simple:
> > PageKmemcg flag is defined as a page type (like buddy, offline, etc),
> > so it takes a bit from a page->mapped counter. Pages with a type set
> > can't be mapped to userspace.
> >
> > But in general the kmemcg flag has nothing to do with mapping to
> > userspace. It only means that the page has been accounted by the page
> > allocator, so it has to be properly uncharged on release.
> >
> > Some bpf maps are mapping the vmalloc-based memory to userspace, and
> > their memory can't be accounted because of this implementation detail.
> >
> > This patchset removes this limitation by moving the PageKmemcg flag
> > into one of the free bits of the page->mem_cgroup pointer. Also it
> > formalizes all accesses to the page->mem_cgroup and page->obj_cgroups
> > using new helpers, adds several checks and removes a couple of obsolete
> > functions. As the result the code became more robust with fewer
> > open-coded bits tricks.
> >
> > The first patch in the series is a bugfix, which I already sent separately.
> > Including it in rfc to make the whole series compile.
> >
> >
>
> This would be a really beneficial feature. I tried to fix the similar
> issue for kvm_vcpu_mmap [1] but using the actual page flag bit but
> your solution would be non controversial.
>
> I think this might also help the accounting of TCP zerocopy receive
> mmapped memory. The memory is charged in skbs but once it is mmapped,
> the skbs get uncharged and we can have a very large amount of
> uncharged memory.
>
> I will take a look at the series.

[1] https://lore.kernel.org/kvm/20190329012836.47013-1-shakeelb@google.com/