Re: Fw: [PATCH] ia64: race flushing icache in do_no_page path

[Nick Piggin <nickpiggin@yahoo.com.au>]

Rohit Seth wrote:
> On Tue, 2007-05-01 at 21:39 +1000, Nick Piggin wrote:
>
> > Rohit Seth wrote:
>
>
> > > If a user is requesting kernel to do (for example) write on a page that is
> > > already mapped with execute and write permissions then it should be treated
> > > as if the user space is doing modifications to that page.  There is no
> > > change in protections so lazy_prot_mmu_update shouldn't be called even
> > > though PG_arch_1 is (I think) set.  Does it answer your concern?
> >
> > I'm not sure that I would agree. For direct modifications of memory via
> > a passed in user virtual address, perhaps. For operations on pagecache,
> > we may not even have a handle to issue the flush cache instruction on (ie.
> > a user virtual address), let alone know whether anyone else is mapping
> > the page.
>
>
> Can you please describe the page cache scenario in more detail?  IMO, if
> a page is user mapped with at least one execute and write permission
> then the responsibility of update caches lies with user.

What if a different user write(2)s the underlying page?


> > > > What if you were to say remove all the PG_arch_1 code, and do 
> > > > something really simple like flush icache in 
> > > > flush_dcache_page? Would performance suffer horribly?
> > >
> > >
> > > On Itanium, I think it will have some performance penalty (horrible or not I
> > > don't know) as you will be invalidating the caches more often.  And they
> > > alsways look for last 0.1% performance that they can get.
> >
> > Sure, but if we _only_ flushed when page_mapcount was raised,
>
>
> You will need this every time there is change in protection (e.g.
> mprotect) not only when page_mapcount is raised.

Yeah, you would retain the flush on fault, I meant you would
introduce a flush in flush_dcache_page for when mapcount is raised.

--
SUSE Labs, Novell Inc.
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/