Nouveau - Apr 2021 - [PATCH v7 5/8] mm: Device exclusive memory access

On Thursday, 1 April 2021 12:18:54 AM AEDT Jason Gunthorpe
wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 31, 2021 at 11:59:28PM +1100, Alistair Popple wrote:
> 
> > I guess that makes sense as the split could go either way at the
> > moment but I should add a check to make sure this isn't used with
> > pinned pages anyway.
> 
> Is it possible to have a pinned page under one of these things? If I
> pin it before you migrate it then it remains pinned but hidden under
> the swap entry?
At the moment yes. But I had planned (and this reminded me) to add a check to 
prevent marking pinned pages for exclusive access. This check was in the 
original migration based implementation as I don't think it makes much sense
to allow exclusive access to pinned pages given it indicates another device is 
possibly using it. 
> So the special logic is needed and the pinned page has to be copied
> and written as a normal pte, not dropped as a migration entry
Yep, if we end up allowing pinned pages to exist under these then that makes 
sense. Thanks for the clarification.

 - Alistair
> Jason
>

On Thu, Apr 01, 2021 at 12:27:52AM +1100, Alistair Popple
wrote:
> On Thursday, 1 April 2021 12:18:54 AM AEDT Jason Gunthorpe wrote:
> > On Wed, Mar 31, 2021 at 11:59:28PM +1100, Alistair Popple wrote:
> > 
> > > I guess that makes sense as the split could go either way at the
> > > moment but I should add a check to make sure this isn't used
with
> > > pinned pages anyway.
> > 
> > Is it possible to have a pinned page under one of these things? If I
> > pin it before you migrate it then it remains pinned but hidden under
> > the swap entry?
> 
> At the moment yes. But I had planned (and this reminded me) to add a check
to
> prevent marking pinned pages for exclusive access. 
How do you even do that without races with GUP fast?

Jason

On Thursday, 1 April 2021 12:46:04 AM AEDT Jason Gunthorpe
wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 01, 2021 at 12:27:52AM +1100, Alistair Popple wrote:
> > On Thursday, 1 April 2021 12:18:54 AM AEDT Jason Gunthorpe wrote:
> > > On Wed, Mar 31, 2021 at 11:59:28PM +1100, Alistair Popple wrote:
> > > 
> > > > I guess that makes sense as the split could go either way at
the
> > > > moment but I should add a check to make sure this isn't
used with
> > > > pinned pages anyway.
> > > 
> > > Is it possible to have a pinned page under one of these things?
If I
> > > pin it before you migrate it then it remains pinned but hidden
under
> > > the swap entry?
> > 
> > At the moment yes. But I had planned (and this reminded me) to add a
check
to 
> > prevent marking pinned pages for exclusive access. 
> 
> How do you even do that without races with GUP fast?
Unless I've missed something I think I've convinced myself it should be
safe
to do the pin check after make_device_exclusive() has replaced all the PTEs 
with exclusive entries.

GUP fast sequence:
1. Read PTE
2. Pin page
3. Check PTE
4. if PTE changed -> unpin and fallback

If make_device_exclusive() runs after (1) it will either succeed or see the 
pin from (2) and fail (as desired). GUP should always see the PTE change and 
fallback which will revoke the exclusive access.

 - Alistair
> Jason
>