[PATCH v6 01/10] mm: add zone device coherent type memory support

[Felix Kuehling]

On 2022-02-15 16:47, Jason Gunthorpe wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 15, 2022 at 04:35:56PM -0500, Felix Kuehling wrote:
>> On 2022-02-15 14:41, Jason Gunthorpe wrote:
>>> On Tue, Feb 15, 2022 at 07:32:09PM +0100, Christoph Hellwig wrote:
>>>> On Tue, Feb 15, 2022 at 10:45:24AM -0400, Jason Gunthorpe wrote:
>>>>>> Do you know if DEVICE_GENERIC pages would end up as PageAnon()? My
>>>>>> assumption was that they would be part of a special mapping.
>>>>> We need to stop using the special PTEs and VMAs for things that have a
>>>>> struct page. This is a mistake DAX created that must be undone.
>>>> Yes, we'll get to it.  Maybe we can do it for the non-DAX devmap
>>>> ptes first given that DAX is more complicated.
>>> Probably, I think we can check the page->pgmap type to tell the
>>> difference.
>>>
>>> I'm not sure how the DEVICE_GENERIC can work without this, as DAX was
>>> made safe by using the unmap_mapping_range(), which won't work
>>> here. Is there some other trick being used to keep track of references
>>> inside the AMD driver?
>> Not sure I'm following all the discussion about VMAs and DAX. So I may be
>> answering the wrong question: We treat each ZONE_DEVICE page as a reference
>> to the BO (buffer object) that backs the page. We increment the BO refcount
>> for each page we migrate into it. In the dev_pagemap_ops.page_free callback
>> we drop that reference. Once all pages backed by a BO are freed, the BO
>> refcount reaches 0 [*] and we can free the BO allocation.
> Userspace does
>   1) mmap(MAP_PRIVATE) to allocate anon memory
>   2) something to trigger migration to install a ZONE_DEVICE page
>   3) munmap()
>
> Who decrements the refcout on the munmap?
>
> When a ZONE_DEVICE page is installed in the PTE is supposed to be
> marked as pte_devmap and that disables all the normal page refcounting
> during munmap().
>
> fsdax makes this work by working the refcounts backwards, the page is
> refcounted while it exists in the driver, when the driver decides to
> remove it then unmap_mapping_range() is called to purge it from all
> PTEs and then refcount is decrd. munmap/fork/etc don't change the
> refcount.

Hmm, that just means, whether or not there are PTEs doesn't really 
matter. It should work the same as it does for DEVICE_PRIVATE pages. I'm 
not sure where DEVICE_PRIVATE page's refcounts are decremented on unmap, 
TBH. But I can't find it in our driver, or in the test_hmm driver for 
that matter.

Regards,
   Felix

>
> Jason