[patch 18/25] mm/madvise: introduce process_madvise() syscall: an external memory hinting API

[Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>]

From: Minchan Kim <minchan@kernel.org>
Subject: mm/madvise: introduce process_madvise() syscall: an external memory hinting API

There is usecase that System Management Software(SMS) want to give a
memory hint like MADV_[COLD|PAGEEOUT] to other processes and in the
case of Android, it is the ActivityManagerService.

The information required to make the reclaim decision is not known to
the app.  Instead, it is known to the centralized userspace
daemon(ActivityManagerService), and that daemon must be able to
initiate reclaim on its own without any app involvement.

To solve the issue, this patch introduces a new syscall
process_madvise(2).  It uses pidfd of an external process to give the
hint.

 int process_madvise(int pidfd, void *addr, size_t length, int advice,
			unsigned long flags);

Since it could affect other process's address range, only privileged
process(CAP_SYS_PTRACE) or something else(e.g., being the same UID)
gives it the right to ptrace the process could use it successfully. 
The flag argument is reserved for future use if we need to extend the
API.

I think supporting all hints madvise has/will supported/support to
process_madvise is rather risky.  Because we are not sure all hints
make sense from external process and implementation for the hint may
rely on the caller being in the current context so it could be
error-prone.  Thus, I just limited hints as MADV_[COLD|PAGEOUT] in this
patch.

If someone want to add other hints, we could hear hear the usecase and
review it for each hint.  It's safer for maintenance rather than
introducing a buggy syscall but hard to fix it later.

Q.1 - Why does any external entity have better knowledge?

Quote from Sandeep

"For Android, every application (including the special SystemServer)
are forked from Zygote.  The reason of course is to share as many
libraries and classes between the two as possible to benefit from the
preloading during boot.

After applications start, (almost) all of the APIs end up calling into
this SystemServer process over IPC (binder) and back to the
application.

In a fully running system, the SystemServer monitors every single
process periodically to calculate their PSS / RSS and also decides
which process is "important" to the user for interactivity.

So, because of how these processes start _and_ the fact that the
SystemServer is looping to monitor each process, it does tend to *know*
which address range of the application is not used / useful.

Besides, we can never rely on applications to clean things up
themselves.  We've had the "hey app1, the system is low on memory,
please trim your memory usage down" notifications for a long time[1]. 
They rely on applications honoring the broadcasts and very few do.

So, if we want to avoid the inevitable killing of the application and
restarting it, some way to be able to tell the OS about unimportant
memory in these applications will be useful.

- ssp

Q.2 - How to guarantee the race(i.e., object validation) between when
giving a hint from an external process and get the hint from the target
process?

process_madvise operates on the target process's address space as it
exists at the instant that process_madvise is called.  If the space
target process can run between the time the process_madvise process
inspects the target process address space and the time that
process_madvise is actually called, process_madvise may operate on
memory regions that the calling process does not expect.  It's the
responsibility of the process calling process_madvise to close this
race condition.  For example, the calling process can suspend the
target process with ptrace, SIGSTOP, or the freezer cgroup so that it
doesn't have an opportunity to change its own address space before
process_madvise is called.  Another option is to operate on memory
regions that the caller knows a priori will be unchanged in the target
process.  Yet another option is to accept the race for certain
process_madvise calls after reasoning that mistargeting will do no
harm.  The suggested API itself does not provide synchronization.  It
also apply other APIs like move_pages, process_vm_write.

The race isn't really a problem though.  Why is it so wrong to require
that callers do their own synchronization in some manner?  Nobody
objects to write(2) merely because it's possible for two processes to
open the same file and clobber each other's writes --- instead, we tell
people to use flock or something.  Think about mmap.  It never
guarantees newly allocated address space is still valid when the user
tries to access it because other threads could unmap the memory right
before.  That's where we need synchronization by using other API or
design from userside.  It shouldn't be part of API itself.  If someone
needs more fine-grained synchronization rather than process level,
there were two ideas suggested - cookie[2] and anon-fd[3].  Both are
applicable via using last reserved argument of the API but I don't
think it's necessary right now since we have already ways to prevent
the race so don't want to add additional complexity with more
fine-grained optimization model.

To make the API extend, it reserved an unsigned long as last argument
so we could support it in future if someone really needs it.

Q.3 - Why doesn't ptrace work?

Injecting an madvise in the target process using ptrace would not work
for us because such injected madvise would have to be executed by the
target process, which means that process would have to be runnable and
that creates the risk of the abovementioned race and hinting a wrong
VMA.  Furthermore, we want to act the hint in caller's context, not the
callee's, because the callee is usually limited in cpuset/cgroups or
even freezed state so they can't act by themselves quick enough, which
causes more thrashing/kill.  It doesn't work if the target process are
ptraced(e.g., strace, debugger, minidump) because a process can have at
most one ptracer.

[1] https://developer.android.com/topic/performance/memory"

[2] process_getinfo for getting the cookie which is updated whenever
    vma of process address layout are changed - Daniel Colascione -
    https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20190520035254.57579-1-minchan@kernel.org/T/#m7694416fd179b2066a2c62b5b139b14e3894e224

[3] anonymous fd which is used for the object(i.e., address range)
    validation - Michal Hocko -
    https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20200120112722.GY18451@dhcp22.suse.cz/

[minchan@kernel.org: fix process_madvise build break for arm64]
  Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20200303145756.GA219683@google.com
[minchan@kernel.org: fix build error for mips of process_madvise]
  Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20200508052517.GA197378@google.com
[akpm@linux-foundation.org: fix patch ordering issue]
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20200302193630.68771-3-minchan@kernel.org
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20200508183320.GA125527@google.com
Signed-off-by: Minchan Kim <minchan@kernel.org>
Reviewed-by: Suren Baghdasaryan <surenb@google.com>
Reviewed-by: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz>
Cc: Alexander Duyck <alexander.h.duyck@linux.intel.com>
Cc: Brian Geffon <bgeffon@google.com>
Cc: Christian Brauner <christian@brauner.io>
Cc: Daniel Colascione <dancol@google.com>
Cc: Jann Horn <jannh@google.com>
Cc: Jens Axboe <axboe@kernel.dk>
Cc: Joel Fernandes <joel@joelfernandes.org>
Cc: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org>
Cc: John Dias <joaodias@google.com>
Cc: Kirill Tkhai <ktkhai@virtuozzo.com>
Cc: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com>
Cc: Oleksandr Natalenko <oleksandr@redhat.com>
Cc: Sandeep Patil <sspatil@google.com>
Cc: SeongJae Park <sj38.park@gmail.com>
Cc: SeongJae Park <sjpark@amazon.de>
Cc: Shakeel Butt <shakeelb@google.com>
Cc: Sonny Rao <sonnyrao@google.com>
Cc: Tim Murray <timmurray@google.com>
Cc: Christian Brauner <christian.brauner@ubuntu.com>
Cc: <linux-man@vger.kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
---

 arch/alpha/kernel/syscalls/syscall.tbl      |    1 
 arch/arm/tools/syscall.tbl                  |    1 
 arch/arm64/include/asm/unistd.h             |    2 
 arch/arm64/include/asm/unistd32.h           |    2 
 arch/ia64/kernel/syscalls/syscall.tbl       |    1 
 arch/m68k/kernel/syscalls/syscall.tbl       |    1 
 arch/microblaze/kernel/syscalls/syscall.tbl |    1 
 arch/mips/kernel/syscalls/syscall_n32.tbl   |    1 
 arch/mips/kernel/syscalls/syscall_n64.tbl   |    1 
 arch/mips/kernel/syscalls/syscall_o32.tbl   |    1 
 arch/parisc/kernel/syscalls/syscall.tbl     |    1 
 arch/powerpc/kernel/syscalls/syscall.tbl    |    1 
 arch/s390/kernel/syscalls/syscall.tbl       |    1 
 arch/sh/kernel/syscalls/syscall.tbl         |    1 
 arch/sparc/kernel/syscalls/syscall.tbl      |    1 
 arch/x86/entry/syscalls/syscall_32.tbl      |    1 
 arch/x86/entry/syscalls/syscall_64.tbl      |    1 
 arch/xtensa/kernel/syscalls/syscall.tbl     |    1 
 include/linux/syscalls.h                    |    2 
 include/uapi/asm-generic/unistd.h           |    4 -
 kernel/sys_ni.c                             |    1 
 mm/madvise.c                                |   64 ++++++++++++++++++
 22 files changed, 89 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

--- a/arch/alpha/kernel/syscalls/syscall.tbl~mm-introduce-external-memory-hinting-api
+++ a/arch/alpha/kernel/syscalls/syscall.tbl
@@ -478,3 +478,4 @@
 547	common	openat2				sys_openat2
 548	common	pidfd_getfd			sys_pidfd_getfd
 549	common	faccessat2			sys_faccessat2
+550	common	process_madvise			sys_process_madvise
--- a/arch/arm64/include/asm/unistd32.h~mm-introduce-external-memory-hinting-api
+++ a/arch/arm64/include/asm/unistd32.h
@@ -885,6 +885,8 @@ __SYSCALL(__NR_openat2, sys_openat2)
 __SYSCALL(__NR_pidfd_getfd, sys_pidfd_getfd)
 #define __NR_faccessat2 439
 __SYSCALL(__NR_faccessat2, sys_faccessat2)
+#define __NR_process_madvise 440
+__SYSCALL(__NR_process_madvise, sys_process_madvise)
 
 /*
  * Please add new compat syscalls above this comment and update
--- a/arch/arm64/include/asm/unistd.h~mm-introduce-external-memory-hinting-api
+++ a/arch/arm64/include/asm/unistd.h
@@ -38,7 +38,7 @@
 #define __ARM_NR_compat_set_tls		(__ARM_NR_COMPAT_BASE + 5)
 #define __ARM_NR_COMPAT_END		(__ARM_NR_COMPAT_BASE + 0x800)
 
-#define __NR_compat_syscalls		440
+#define __NR_compat_syscalls		441
 #endif
 
 #define __ARCH_WANT_SYS_CLONE
--- a/arch/arm/tools/syscall.tbl~mm-introduce-external-memory-hinting-api
+++ a/arch/arm/tools/syscall.tbl
@@ -452,3 +452,4 @@
 437	common	openat2				sys_openat2
 438	common	pidfd_getfd			sys_pidfd_getfd
 439	common	faccessat2			sys_faccessat2
+440	common	process_madvise			sys_process_madvise
--- a/arch/ia64/kernel/syscalls/syscall.tbl~mm-introduce-external-memory-hinting-api
+++ a/arch/ia64/kernel/syscalls/syscall.tbl
@@ -359,3 +359,4 @@
 437	common	openat2				sys_openat2
 438	common	pidfd_getfd			sys_pidfd_getfd
 439	common	faccessat2			sys_faccessat2
+440	common	process_madvise			sys_process_madvise
--- a/arch/m68k/kernel/syscalls/syscall.tbl~mm-introduce-external-memory-hinting-api
+++ a/arch/m68k/kernel/syscalls/syscall.tbl
@@ -438,3 +438,4 @@
 437	common	openat2				sys_openat2
 438	common	pidfd_getfd			sys_pidfd_getfd
 439	common	faccessat2			sys_faccessat2
+440	common	process_madvise			sys_process_madvise
--- a/arch/microblaze/kernel/syscalls/syscall.tbl~mm-introduce-external-memory-hinting-api
+++ a/arch/microblaze/kernel/syscalls/syscall.tbl
@@ -444,3 +444,4 @@
 437	common	openat2				sys_openat2
 438	common	pidfd_getfd			sys_pidfd_getfd
 439	common	faccessat2			sys_faccessat2
+440	common	process_madvise			sys_process_madvise
--- a/arch/mips/kernel/syscalls/syscall_n32.tbl~mm-introduce-external-memory-hinting-api
+++ a/arch/mips/kernel/syscalls/syscall_n32.tbl
@@ -377,3 +377,4 @@
 437	n32	openat2				sys_openat2
 438	n32	pidfd_getfd			sys_pidfd_getfd
 439	n32	faccessat2			sys_faccessat2
+440	n32	process_madvise			sys_process_madvise
--- a/arch/mips/kernel/syscalls/syscall_n64.tbl~mm-introduce-external-memory-hinting-api
+++ a/arch/mips/kernel/syscalls/syscall_n64.tbl
@@ -353,3 +353,4 @@
 437	n64	openat2				sys_openat2
 438	n64	pidfd_getfd			sys_pidfd_getfd
 439	n64	faccessat2			sys_faccessat2
+440	n64	process_madvise			sys_process_madvise
--- a/arch/mips/kernel/syscalls/syscall_o32.tbl~mm-introduce-external-memory-hinting-api
+++ a/arch/mips/kernel/syscalls/syscall_o32.tbl
@@ -426,3 +426,4 @@
 437	o32	openat2				sys_openat2
 438	o32	pidfd_getfd			sys_pidfd_getfd
 439	o32	faccessat2			sys_faccessat2
+440	o32	process_madvise			sys_process_madvise
--- a/arch/parisc/kernel/syscalls/syscall.tbl~mm-introduce-external-memory-hinting-api
+++ a/arch/parisc/kernel/syscalls/syscall.tbl
@@ -436,3 +436,4 @@
 437	common	openat2				sys_openat2
 438	common	pidfd_getfd			sys_pidfd_getfd
 439	common	faccessat2			sys_faccessat2
+440	common	process_madvise			sys_process_madvise
--- a/arch/powerpc/kernel/syscalls/syscall.tbl~mm-introduce-external-memory-hinting-api
+++ a/arch/powerpc/kernel/syscalls/syscall.tbl
@@ -528,3 +528,4 @@
 437	common	openat2				sys_openat2
 438	common	pidfd_getfd			sys_pidfd_getfd
 439	common	faccessat2			sys_faccessat2
+440	common	process_madvise			sys_process_madvise
--- a/arch/s390/kernel/syscalls/syscall.tbl~mm-introduce-external-memory-hinting-api
+++ a/arch/s390/kernel/syscalls/syscall.tbl
@@ -441,3 +441,4 @@
 437  common	openat2			sys_openat2			sys_openat2
 438  common	pidfd_getfd		sys_pidfd_getfd			sys_pidfd_getfd
 439  common	faccessat2		sys_faccessat2			sys_faccessat2
+440  common	process_madvise		sys_process_madvise		sys_process_madvise
--- a/arch/sh/kernel/syscalls/syscall.tbl~mm-introduce-external-memory-hinting-api
+++ a/arch/sh/kernel/syscalls/syscall.tbl
@@ -441,3 +441,4 @@
 437	common	openat2				sys_openat2
 438	common	pidfd_getfd			sys_pidfd_getfd
 439	common	faccessat2			sys_faccessat2
+440	common	process_madvise			sys_process_madvise
--- a/arch/sparc/kernel/syscalls/syscall.tbl~mm-introduce-external-memory-hinting-api
+++ a/arch/sparc/kernel/syscalls/syscall.tbl
@@ -484,3 +484,4 @@
 437	common	openat2			sys_openat2
 438	common	pidfd_getfd			sys_pidfd_getfd
 439	common	faccessat2			sys_faccessat2
+440	common	process_madvise			sys_process_madvise
--- a/arch/x86/entry/syscalls/syscall_32.tbl~mm-introduce-external-memory-hinting-api
+++ a/arch/x86/entry/syscalls/syscall_32.tbl
@@ -443,3 +443,4 @@
 437	i386	openat2			sys_openat2
 438	i386	pidfd_getfd		sys_pidfd_getfd
 439	i386	faccessat2		sys_faccessat2
+440	i386	process_madvise		sys_process_madvise
--- a/arch/x86/entry/syscalls/syscall_64.tbl~mm-introduce-external-memory-hinting-api
+++ a/arch/x86/entry/syscalls/syscall_64.tbl
@@ -360,6 +360,7 @@
 437	common	openat2			sys_openat2
 438	common	pidfd_getfd		sys_pidfd_getfd
 439	common	faccessat2		sys_faccessat2
+440	common	process_madvise		sys_process_madvise
 
 #
 # x32-specific system call numbers start at 512 to avoid cache impact
--- a/arch/xtensa/kernel/syscalls/syscall.tbl~mm-introduce-external-memory-hinting-api
+++ a/arch/xtensa/kernel/syscalls/syscall.tbl
@@ -409,3 +409,4 @@
 437	common	openat2				sys_openat2
 438	common	pidfd_getfd			sys_pidfd_getfd
 439	common	faccessat2			sys_faccessat2
+440	common	process_madvise			sys_process_madvise
--- a/include/linux/syscalls.h~mm-introduce-external-memory-hinting-api
+++ a/include/linux/syscalls.h
@@ -878,6 +878,8 @@ asmlinkage long sys_munlockall(void);
 asmlinkage long sys_mincore(unsigned long start, size_t len,
 				unsigned char __user * vec);
 asmlinkage long sys_madvise(unsigned long start, size_t len, int behavior);
+asmlinkage long sys_process_madvise(int pidfd, unsigned long start,
+			size_t len, int behavior, unsigned long flags);
 asmlinkage long sys_remap_file_pages(unsigned long start, unsigned long size,
 			unsigned long prot, unsigned long pgoff,
 			unsigned long flags);
--- a/include/uapi/asm-generic/unistd.h~mm-introduce-external-memory-hinting-api
+++ a/include/uapi/asm-generic/unistd.h
@@ -857,9 +857,11 @@ __SYSCALL(__NR_openat2, sys_openat2)
 __SYSCALL(__NR_pidfd_getfd, sys_pidfd_getfd)
 #define __NR_faccessat2 439
 __SYSCALL(__NR_faccessat2, sys_faccessat2)
+#define __NR_process_madvise 440
+__SYSCALL(__NR_process_madvise, sys_process_madvise)
 
 #undef __NR_syscalls
-#define __NR_syscalls 440
+#define __NR_syscalls 441
 
 /*
  * 32 bit systems traditionally used different
--- a/kernel/sys_ni.c~mm-introduce-external-memory-hinting-api
+++ a/kernel/sys_ni.c
@@ -280,6 +280,7 @@ COND_SYSCALL(mlockall);
 COND_SYSCALL(munlockall);
 COND_SYSCALL(mincore);
 COND_SYSCALL(madvise);
+COND_SYSCALL(process_madvise);
 COND_SYSCALL(remap_file_pages);
 COND_SYSCALL(mbind);
 COND_SYSCALL_COMPAT(mbind);
--- a/mm/madvise.c~mm-introduce-external-memory-hinting-api
+++ a/mm/madvise.c
@@ -17,6 +17,7 @@
 #include <linux/falloc.h>
 #include <linux/fadvise.h>
 #include <linux/sched.h>
+#include <linux/sched/mm.h>
 #include <linux/ksm.h>
 #include <linux/fs.h>
 #include <linux/file.h>
@@ -995,6 +996,18 @@ madvise_behavior_valid(int behavior)
 	}
 }
 
+static bool
+process_madvise_behavior_valid(int behavior)
+{
+	switch (behavior) {
+	case MADV_COLD:
+	case MADV_PAGEOUT:
+		return true;
+	default:
+		return false;
+	}
+}
+
 /*
  * The madvise(2) system call.
  *
@@ -1042,6 +1055,11 @@ madvise_behavior_valid(int behavior)
  *  MADV_DONTDUMP - the application wants to prevent pages in the given range
  *		from being included in its core dump.
  *  MADV_DODUMP - cancel MADV_DONTDUMP: no longer exclude from core dump.
+ *  MADV_COLD - the application is not expected to use this memory soon,
+ *		deactivate pages in this range so that they can be reclaimed
+ *		easily if memory pressure hanppens.
+ *  MADV_PAGEOUT - the application is not expected to use this memory soon,
+ *		page out the pages in this range immediately.
  *
  * return values:
  *  zero    - success
@@ -1176,3 +1194,49 @@ SYSCALL_DEFINE3(madvise, unsigned long,
 {
 	return do_madvise(current, current->mm, start, len_in, behavior);
 }
+
+SYSCALL_DEFINE5(process_madvise, int, pidfd, unsigned long, start,
+		size_t, len_in, int, behavior, unsigned long, flags)
+{
+	int ret;
+	struct fd f;
+	struct pid *pid;
+	struct task_struct *task;
+	struct mm_struct *mm;
+
+	if (flags != 0)
+		return -EINVAL;
+
+	if (!process_madvise_behavior_valid(behavior))
+		return -EINVAL;
+
+	f = fdget(pidfd);
+	if (!f.file)
+		return -EBADF;
+
+	pid = pidfd_pid(f.file);
+	if (IS_ERR(pid)) {
+		ret = PTR_ERR(pid);
+		goto fdput;
+	}
+
+	task = get_pid_task(pid, PIDTYPE_PID);
+	if (!task) {
+		ret = -ESRCH;
+		goto fdput;
+	}
+
+	mm = mm_access(task, PTRACE_MODE_ATTACH_FSCREDS);
+	if (IS_ERR_OR_NULL(mm)) {
+		ret = IS_ERR(mm) ? PTR_ERR(mm) : -ESRCH;
+		goto release_task;
+	}
+
+	ret = do_madvise(task, mm, start, len_in, behavior);
+	mmput(mm);
+release_task:
+	put_task_struct(task);
+fdput:
+	fdput(f);
+	return ret;
+}
_