Re: [PATCH 01/18] mm: add a kunmap_local_dirty helper

From: Ira Weiny <ira.weiny@intel.com>
To: Herbert Xu <herbert@gondor.apana.org.au>
Cc: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>, Jens Axboe <axboe@kernel.dk>,
	Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>,
	Thomas Bogendoerfer <tsbogend@alpha.franken.de>,
	Geoff Levand <geoff@infradead.org>,
	Ilya Dryomov <idryomov@gmail.com>,
	Dongsheng Yang <dongsheng.yang@easystack.cn>,
	Mike Snitzer <snitzer@redhat.com>,
	"James E.J. Bottomley" <James.Bottomley@HansenPartnership.com>,
	dm-devel@redhat.com, linux-mips@vger.kernel.org,
	linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-block@vger.kernel.org,
	linuxppc-dev@lists.ozlabs.org, ceph-devel@vger.kernel.org,
	linux-arch@vger.kernel.org,
	"David S. Miller" <davem@davemloft.net>,
	Christoph Lameter <cl@gentwo.de>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 01/18] mm: add a kunmap_local_dirty helper
Date: Fri, 18 Jun 2021 11:12:58 -0700	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20210618181258.GC1905674@iweiny-DESK2.sc.intel.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20210618033728.GA16787@gondor.apana.org.au>

On Fri, Jun 18, 2021 at 11:37:28AM +0800, Herbert Xu wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 17, 2021 at 08:01:57PM -0700, Ira Weiny wrote:
> >
> > > +		flush_kernel_dcache_page(__page);		\
> > 
> > Is this required on 32bit systems?  Why is kunmap_flush_on_unmap() not
> > sufficient on 64bit systems?  The normal kunmap_local() path does that.
> > 
> > I'm sorry but I did not see a conclusion to my query on V1. Herbert implied the
> > he just copied from the crypto code.[1]  I'm concerned that this _dirty() call
> > is just going to confuse the users of kmap even more.  So why can't we get to
> > the bottom of why flush_kernel_dcache_page() needs so much logic around it
> > before complicating the general kernel users.
> > 
> > I would like to see it go away if possible.
> 
> This thread may be related:
> 
> https://lwn.net/Articles/240249/

Interesting!  Thanks!

Digging around a bit more I found:

https://lore.kernel.org/patchwork/patch/439637/

Auditing all the flush_dcache_page() arch code reveals that the mapping field
is either unused, or is checked for NULL.  Furthermore, all the implementations
call page_mapping_file() which further limits the page to not be a swap page.

All flush_kernel_dcache_page() implementations appears to operate the same way
in all arch's which define that call.

So I'm confident now that additional !PageSlab(__page) checks are not needed
and this patch is unnecessary.   Christoph, can we leave this out of the kmap
API and just fold the flush_kernel_dcache_page() calls back into the bvec code?

Unfortunately, I'm not convinced this can be handled completely by
kunmap_local() nor the mem*_page() calls because there is a difference between
flush_dcache_page() and flush_kernel_dcache_page() in most archs...  [parisc
being an exception which falls back to flush_kernel_dcache_page()]...

It seems like the generic unmap path _should_ be able to determine which call
to make based on the page but I'd have to look at that more.

Ira