Re: [PATCH v2 10/39] x86/mm: Introduce _PAGE_COW

From: Jann Horn
Date: Fri Sep 30 2022 - 11:17:11 EST


On Fri, Sep 30, 2022 at 12:30 AM Rick Edgecombe
<rick.p.edgecombe@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> The reason it's lightly used is that Dirty=1 is normally set _before_ a
> write. A write with a Write=0 PTE would typically only generate a fault,
> not set Dirty=1. Hardware can (rarely) both set Write=1 *and* generate the
> fault, resulting in a Dirty=0,Write=1 PTE. Hardware which supports shadow
> stacks will no longer exhibit this oddity.

Stupid question, since I just recently learned that IOMMUv2 is a
thing: I assume this also holds for IOMMUs that implement IOMMUv2/SVA,
where the IOMMU directly walks the userspace page tables, and not just
for the CPU core?