Re: [RFC] another crazy idea to get rid of mmap_sem in faults

[Christoph Lameter <cl@linux-foundation.org>]

On Mon, 1 Dec 2008, Peter Zijlstra wrote:

> Well, yeah, mainly the vmas, right? We need to ensure the vma we fault
> into doesn't go away or change under us.
>
> Does mmap_sem protect more than the vma's and their RB tree?

It may protect portions of the mm_struct?

> I'll ponder the COW stuff, but since that too holds on to the PTL I
> think we're good.

Copy pte range is called under mmap_sem when forking.

> > Then you will need to use RCU for the vmas in general. We already use
> > RCU for the anonymous vma. Extend that to all vmas?
>
> RCU cannot be used, since we need to be able to sleep in a fault in
> order to do IO. So we need to extend SRCU - but since we have all the
> experience of preemptible RCU to draw from I think that should not be an
> issue.

Then do not hold it across sleeping portions. If you have to sleep then
start another rcu section and recheck the situation before proceeding.

> > !MM case. So maybe you could get to the notion of a "dead" vma easily.
>
> !MMU case?, yes I was thinking to abuse that ;-)

Right.

> > How would this sync with other operations that need to take mmap_sem?
>
> What other ops? mmap/munmap/mremap/madvise etc.?

Look for down_write operations on mmap_sem. Things like set_brk etc.

> The idea is that any change to a vma (which would require exclusive
> mmap_sem) will replace the vma - marking the old one dead and SRCU free
> it.

That is a classic RCU approach. The problem then is that operations may
continue on the stale object. You need to make sure that no modifications
can occur to the original VMA while it exists in two version.

> struct vm_area_struct *find_vma(mm, addr)
> {
> again:
> 	rcu_read_lock(); /* solely for the lookup structure */
> 	vma = tree_lookup(&mm->vma_tree, addr); /* vma is srcu guarded */
> 	rcu_read_unlock();
> 	if (vma && vma_is_dead(vma))
> 		goto again;
>
> 	return vma;

Dont you need to check and increase the refcount in the rcu section (in
the absence of any other locking) to make sure that the object still
exists when you refer to it next?

> /*
>  * validates if a previously obtained vma is still valid,
>  * synchronizes with vma against PTL.
>  */
> int validate_vma(mm, vma, addr)
> {
> 	ASSERT_PTL_LOCKED(mm, addr);
>
> 	if (!vma_is_dead(vma))
> 		return 1;
>
> 	vma2 = find_vma(mm, addr);
>
> 	if (/*old vma fault is still valid in vma2*/)
> 		return 1
>
> 	return 0;
> }

This can only be done while the refcount is elevated.

> > srcu may have too much of an overhead for this.
>
> Then we need to fix that ;-) But surely SRCU is cheaper than mmap_sem.

Holding off frees for a long time (sleeping???) is usually bad for cache
hot behavior. It introduces cacheline refetches. Avoid if possible.

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