Questions about TTM buffer object maping

Jean-Sébastien Pédron jean-sebastien.pedron at dumbbell.fr
Wed Jul 10 17:27:05 PDT 2013


Hello,

I'm trying to understand how TTM buffer object mapping works on Linux, 
to make this behave properly on FreeBSD.

Here's what I think I understand:

When a buffer object is mmap()'d, ttm_bo_vm_open() is called. When 
there's a page fault, the page is looked up and inserted in the VMA 
using vm_insert_mixed(). When a buffer object is munmap()'d, 
ttm_bo_vm_close() is called, which drops a reference. When the last 
reference is dropped, the buffer object is destroyed.

What's still not clear to me is how munmap() works here. After talking 
about this on IRC with some people, I think that unmap_mapping_range() 
(called by ttm_bo_unmap_virtual_locked()) is equivalent to calling 
munmap() from userland. Is that true?

When a buffer object is moved, what happens to the mapping?

In particular, I see in ttm_bo_move_accel_cleanup() that the ttm 
structure can be transferred to ghost_obj, which is destroyed shortly 
after. This ends up in ttm_put_pages() which uses __free_page(), for 
each page of the buffer object. At this stage, is the ghost object 
already munmap()'d? Or does __free_page() unmap a page implicitly (ie. 
remove it from VMA)?

Sorry if my questions are stupid, I'm rather new to memory management.

-- 
Jean-Sébastien Pédron


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