Re: [PATCH v3 2/2] ksm: Optimize rmap_walk_ksm by passing a suitable address range

David Hildenbrand (Arm)
2026-04-08T12:57:18Z

On 4/7/26 11:36, Lorenzo Stoakes (Oracle) wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 07, 2026 at 02:21:41PM +0800, xu.xin16@zte.com.cn wrote:
>>>
>>> I'd completely forgotten that patch by now! But it's dealing with a
>>> different issue; and note how it's intentionally leaving MADV_MERGEABLE
>>> on the vma itself, just using MADV_UNMERGEABLE (with &dummy) as an
>>> interface to CoW the KSM pages at that time, letting them be remerged after.
>
> Hmm yeah, we mark them unmergeable but don't update the VMA flags (since using
> &dummy), so they can just be merged later right?
>
> And then the:
>
> void rmap_walk_ksm(struct folio *folio, struct rmap_walk_control *rwc)
> {
> ...
> const pgoff_t pgoff = rmap_item->address >> PAGE_SHIFT;
> ...
> anon_vma_interval_tree_foreach(vmac, &anon_vma->rb_root,
> pgoff, pgoff) {
> ...
> }
> ...
> }
>
> Would _assume_ that folio->pgoff == addr >> PAGE_SHIFT, which will no longer be
> the case here?

I'm wondering whether we could figure the pgoff out, somehow, so we
wouldn't have to store it elsewhere.

What we need is essentially what __folio_set_anon() would have done for
the original folio we replaced.

folio->index = linear_page_index(vma, address);

Could we obtain that from the anon_vma assigned to our rmap_item?

pgoff_t pgoff;

pgoff = (rmap_item->address - anon_vma->vma->vm_start) >> PAGE_SHIFT;
pgoff += anon_vma->vma->vm_pgoff;

It would be the same adjustment everywhere we look in child processes,
because the moment they would mremap() would be where we would have
unshared.

Just a thought after reading avc_start_pgoff ...

--
Cheers,

David