Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2012 10:44:35 +0300
From: "Kirill A. Shutemov" <kirill@shutemov.name>
To: Will Deacon <will.deacon@arm.com>
Cc: linux-mm@kvack.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
        linux-arch@vger.kernel.org, mhocko@suse.cz, peterz@infradead.org,
        akpm@linux-foundation.org, Chris Metcalf <cmetcalf@tilera.com>,
        Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@redhat.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v3] mm: thp: Set the accessed flag for old pages on
 access fault.
Message-ID: <20121026074435.GA871@shutemov.name>
References: <1351183471-14710-1-git-send-email-will.deacon@arm.com>
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On Thu, Oct 25, 2012 at 05:44:31PM +0100, Will Deacon wrote:
> On x86 memory accesses to pages without the ACCESSED flag set result in the
> ACCESSED flag being set automatically. With the ARM architecture a page access
> fault is raised instead (and it will continue to be raised until the ACCESSED
> flag is set for the appropriate PTE/PMD).
> 
> For normal memory pages, handle_pte_fault will call pte_mkyoung (effectively
> setting the ACCESSED flag). For transparent huge pages, pmd_mkyoung will only
> be called for a write fault.
> 
> This patch ensures that faults on transparent hugepages which do not result
> in a CoW update the access flags for the faulting pmd.
> 
> Cc: Chris Metcalf <cmetcalf@tilera.com>
> Cc: Kirill A. Shutemov <kirill@shutemov.name>
> Cc: Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@redhat.com>
> Signed-off-by: Will Deacon <will.deacon@arm.com>
> ---
> 
> Ok chaps, I rebased this thing onto today's next (which basically
> necessitated a rewrite) so I've reluctantly dropped my acks and kindly
> ask if you could eyeball the new code, especially where the locking is
> concerned. In the numa code (do_huge_pmd_prot_none), Peter checks again
> that the page is not splitting, but I can't see why that is required.

In handle_mm_fault() we check if the pmd is under splitting without
page_table_lock. It's kind of speculative cheap check. We need to re-check
if the PMD is really not under splitting after taking page_table_lock.

See section "Locking in hugepage aware code" in Documentation/vm/transhuge.txt

-- 
 Kirill A. Shutemov
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