Re: [RFC PATCH v2 9/9] mm: Introduce Copy-On-Write PTE table

[David Hildenbrand]

On 27.09.22 21:53, Chih-En Lin wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 27, 2022 at 06:38:05PM +0000, Nadav Amit wrote:
> > I only skimmed the patches that you sent. The last couple of patches seem a
> > bit rough and dirty, so I am sorry to say that I skipped them (too many
> > “TODO” and “XXX” for my taste).
> >
> > I am sure other will have better feedback than me. I understand there is a
> > tradeoff and that this mechanism is mostly for high performance
> > snapshotting/forking. It would be beneficial to see whether this mechanism
> > can somehow be combined with existing ones (mshare?).
>
> Still thanks for your feedback. :)
> I'm looking at the PTE refcount and mshare patches. And, maybe it can
> combine with them in the future.
>
> > The code itself can be improved. I found the reasoning about synchronization
> > and TLB flushes and synchronizations to be lacking, and the code to seem
> > potentially incorrect. Better comments would help, even if the code is
> > correct.
> >
> > There are additional general questions. For instance, when sharing a
> > page-table, do you properly update the refcount/mapcount of the mapped
> > pages? And are there any possible interactions with THP?
>
> Since access to those mapped pages will cost a lot of time, and this
> will make fork() even have more overhead. It will not update the
> refcount/mapcount of the mapped pages.

Oh no.

So we'd have pages logically mapped into two processes (two page table 
structures), but the refcount/mapcount/PageAnonExclusive would not 
reflect that?

Honestly, I don't think it is upstream material in that hacky form. No, 
we don't need more COW CVEs or more COW over-complications that 
destabilize the whole system.

IMHO, a relaxed form that focuses on only the memory consumption 
reduction could *possibly* be accepted upstream if it's not too invasive 
or complex. During fork(), we'd do exactly what we used to do to PTEs 
(increment mapcount, refcount, trying to clear PageAnonExclusive, map 
the page R/O, duplicate swap entries; all while holding the page table 
lock), however, sharing the prepared page table with the child process 
using COW after we prepared it.

Any (most once we want to *optimize* rmap handling) modification 
attempts require breaking COW -- copying the page table for the faulting 
process. But at that point, the PTEs are already write-protected and 
properly accounted (refcount/mapcount/PageAnonExclusive).

Doing it that way might not require any questionable GUP hacks and 
swapping, MMU notifiers etc. "might just work as expected" because the 
accounting remains unchanged" -- we simply de-duplicate the page table 
itself we'd have after fork and any modification attempts simply replace 
the mapped copy.

But devil is in the detail (page table lock, TLB flushing).

"will make fork() even have more overhead" is not a good excuse for such 
complexity/hacks -- sure, it will make your benchmark results look 
better in comparison ;)

--
Thanks,

David / dhildenb