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To:     Chao Peng <chao.p.peng@linux.intel.com>, kvm@vger.kernel.org,
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Cc:     Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@redhat.com>,
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        Sean Christopherson <seanjc@google.com>,
        Vitaly Kuznetsov <vkuznets@redhat.com>,
        Wanpeng Li <wanpengli@tencent.com>,
        Jim Mattson <jmattson@google.com>,
        Joerg Roedel <joro@8bytes.org>,
        Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>,
        Ingo Molnar <mingo@redhat.com>, Borislav Petkov <bp@alien8.de>,
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        Hugh Dickins <hughd@google.com>,
        Jeff Layton <jlayton@kernel.org>,
        "J . Bruce Fields" <bfields@fieldses.org>,
        Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>,
        Shuah Khan <shuah@kernel.org>, Mike Rapoport <rppt@kernel.org>,
        Steven Price <steven.price@arm.com>,
        "Maciej S . Szmigiero" <mail@maciej.szmigiero.name>,
        Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz>,
        Vishal Annapurve <vannapurve@google.com>,
        Yu Zhang <yu.c.zhang@linux.intel.com>,
        "Kirill A . Shutemov" <kirill.shutemov@linux.intel.com>,
        luto@kernel.org, jun.nakajima@intel.com, dave.hansen@intel.com,
        ak@linux.intel.com, aarcange@redhat.com, ddutile@redhat.com,
        dhildenb@redhat.com, Quentin Perret <qperret@google.com>,
        Michael Roth <michael.roth@amd.com>, mhocko@suse.com,
        Muchun Song <songmuchun@bytedance.com>
References: <20220706082016.2603916-1-chao.p.peng@linux.intel.com>
 <20220706082016.2603916-4-chao.p.peng@linux.intel.com>
From:   David Hildenbrand <david@redhat.com>
Organization: Red Hat
Subject: Re: [PATCH v7 03/14] mm: Introduce memfile_notifier
In-Reply-To: <20220706082016.2603916-4-chao.p.peng@linux.intel.com>
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On 06.07.22 10:20, Chao Peng wrote:
> This patch introduces memfile_notifier facility so existing memory file
> subsystems (e.g. tmpfs/hugetlbfs) can provide memory pages to allow a
> third kernel component to make use of memory bookmarked in the memory
> file and gets notified when the pages in the memory file become
> invalidated.

Stupid question, but why is this called "memfile_notifier" and not
"memfd_notifier". We're only dealing with memfd's after all ... which
are anonymous files essentially. Or what am I missing? Are there any
other plans for fs than plain memfd support that I am not aware of?

> 
> It will be used for KVM to use a file descriptor as the guest memory
> backing store and KVM will use this memfile_notifier interface to
> interact with memory file subsystems. In the future there might be other
> consumers (e.g. VFIO with encrypted device memory).
> 
> It consists below components:
>  - memfile_backing_store: Each supported memory file subsystem can be
>    implemented as a memory backing store which bookmarks memory and
>    provides callbacks for other kernel systems (memfile_notifier
>    consumers) to interact with.
>  - memfile_notifier: memfile_notifier consumers defines callbacks and
>    associate them to a file using memfile_register_notifier().
>  - memfile_node: A memfile_node is associated with the file (inode) from
>    the backing store and includes feature flags and a list of registered
>    memfile_notifier for notifying.
> 
> In KVM usages, userspace is in charge of guest memory lifecycle: it first
> allocates pages in memory backing store and then passes the fd to KVM and
> lets KVM register memory slot to memory backing store via
> memfile_register_notifier.

Can we add documentation/description in any form how the different
functions exposed in linux/memfile_notifier.h are supposed to be used?

Staring at memfile_node_set_flags() and memfile_notifier_invalidate()
it's not immediately clear to me who's supposed to call that and under
which conditions.

-- 
Thanks,

David / dhildenb