Re: [PATCH 1/4] mm/gup: Add FOLL_INTERRUPTIBLE

From: John Hubbard
Date: Mon Jun 27 2022 - 22:07:40 EST


On 6/22/22 14:36, Peter Xu wrote:
We have had FAULT_FLAG_INTERRUPTIBLE but it was never applied to GUPs. One
issue with it is that not all GUP paths are able to handle signal delivers
besides SIGKILL.

That's not ideal for the GUP users who are actually able to handle these
cases, like KVM.

KVM uses GUP extensively on faulting guest pages, during which we've got
existing infrastructures to retry a page fault at a later time. Allowing
the GUP to be interrupted by generic signals can make KVM related threads
to be more responsive. For examples:

(1) SIGUSR1: which QEMU/KVM uses to deliver an inter-process IPI,
e.g. when the admin issues a vm_stop QMP command, SIGUSR1 can be
generated to kick the vcpus out of kernel context immediately,

(2) SIGINT: which can be used with interactive hypervisor users to stop a
virtual machine with Ctrl-C without any delays/hangs,

(3) SIGTRAP: which grants GDB capability even during page faults that are
stuck for a long time.

Normally hypervisor will be able to receive these signals properly, but not
if we're stuck in a GUP for a long time for whatever reason. It happens
easily with a stucked postcopy migration when e.g. a network temp failure
happens, then some vcpu threads can hang death waiting for the pages. With
the new FOLL_INTERRUPTIBLE, we can allow GUP users like KVM to selectively
enable the ability to trap these signals.

Signed-off-by: Peter Xu <peterx@xxxxxxxxxx>
---
include/linux/mm.h | 1 +
mm/gup.c | 33 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++----
2 files changed, 30 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-)

diff --git a/include/linux/mm.h b/include/linux/mm.h
index bc8f326be0ce..ebdf8a6b86c1 100644
--- a/include/linux/mm.h
+++ b/include/linux/mm.h
@@ -2941,6 +2941,7 @@ struct page *follow_page(struct vm_area_struct *vma, unsigned long address,
#define FOLL_SPLIT_PMD 0x20000 /* split huge pmd before returning */
#define FOLL_PIN 0x40000 /* pages must be released via unpin_user_page */
#define FOLL_FAST_ONLY 0x80000 /* gup_fast: prevent fall-back to slow gup */
+#define FOLL_INTERRUPTIBLE 0x100000 /* allow interrupts from generic signals */

Perhaps, s/generic/non-fatal/ ?
/*
* FOLL_PIN and FOLL_LONGTERM may be used in various combinations with each
diff --git a/mm/gup.c b/mm/gup.c
index 551264407624..ad74b137d363 100644
--- a/mm/gup.c
+++ b/mm/gup.c
@@ -933,8 +933,17 @@ static int faultin_page(struct vm_area_struct *vma,
fault_flags |= FAULT_FLAG_WRITE;
if (*flags & FOLL_REMOTE)
fault_flags |= FAULT_FLAG_REMOTE;
- if (locked)
+ if (locked) {
fault_flags |= FAULT_FLAG_ALLOW_RETRY | FAULT_FLAG_KILLABLE;
+ /*
+ * We should only grant FAULT_FLAG_INTERRUPTIBLE when we're
+ * (at least) killable. It also mostly means we're not
+ * with NOWAIT. Otherwise ignore FOLL_INTERRUPTIBLE since
+ * it won't make a lot of sense to be used alone.
+ */

This comment seems a little confusing due to its location. We've just
checked "locked", but the comment is talking about other constraints.

Not sure what to suggest. Maybe move it somewhere else?

+ if (*flags & FOLL_INTERRUPTIBLE)
+ fault_flags |= FAULT_FLAG_INTERRUPTIBLE;
+ }
if (*flags & FOLL_NOWAIT)
fault_flags |= FAULT_FLAG_ALLOW_RETRY | FAULT_FLAG_RETRY_NOWAIT;
if (*flags & FOLL_TRIED) {
@@ -1322,6 +1331,22 @@ int fixup_user_fault(struct mm_struct *mm,
}
EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL(fixup_user_fault);
+/*
+ * GUP always responds to fatal signals. When FOLL_INTERRUPTIBLE is
+ * specified, it'll also respond to generic signals. The caller of GUP
+ * that has FOLL_INTERRUPTIBLE should take care of the GUP interruption.
+ */
+static bool gup_signal_pending(unsigned int flags)
+{
+ if (fatal_signal_pending(current))
+ return true;
+
+ if (!(flags & FOLL_INTERRUPTIBLE))
+ return false;
+
+ return signal_pending(current);
+}
+

OK.

/*
* Please note that this function, unlike __get_user_pages will not
* return 0 for nr_pages > 0 without FOLL_NOWAIT
@@ -1403,11 +1428,11 @@ static __always_inline long __get_user_pages_locked(struct mm_struct *mm,
* Repeat on the address that fired VM_FAULT_RETRY
* with both FAULT_FLAG_ALLOW_RETRY and
* FAULT_FLAG_TRIED. Note that GUP can be interrupted
- * by fatal signals, so we need to check it before we
+ * by fatal signals of even common signals, depending on
+ * the caller's request. So we need to check it before we
* start trying again otherwise it can loop forever.
*/
-
- if (fatal_signal_pending(current)) {
+ if (gup_signal_pending(flags)) {

This is new and bold. :) Signals that an application was prepared to
handle can now cause gup to quit early. I wonder if that will break any
use cases out there (SIGPIPE...) ?

Generally, gup callers handle failures pretty well, so it's probably
not too bad. But I wanted to mention the idea that handled interrupts
might be a little surprising here.

thanks,
--
John Hubbard
NVIDIA

if (!pages_done)
pages_done = -EINTR;
break;