Re: [PATCH 2/4] mm: introduce external memory hinting API

From: Minchan Kim <minchan@kernel.org>
To: Christian Brauner <christian.brauner@ubuntu.com>
Cc: Kirill Tkhai <ktkhai@virtuozzo.com>,
	Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com>,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>,
	LKML <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
	linux-mm <linux-mm@kvack.org>,
	linux-api@vger.kernel.org, oleksandr@redhat.com,
	Suren Baghdasaryan <surenb@google.com>,
	Tim Murray <timmurray@google.com>,
	Daniel Colascione <dancol@google.com>,
	Sandeep Patil <sspatil@google.com>,
	Sonny Rao <sonnyrao@google.com>,
	Brian Geffon <bgeffon@google.com>,
	Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org>,
	Shakeel Butt <shakeelb@google.com>,
	John Dias <joaodias@google.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 2/4] mm: introduce external memory hinting API
Date: Mon, 13 Jan 2020 10:44:08 -0800	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20200113184408.GD110363@google.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20200113104256.5ujbplyec2sk4onn@wittgenstein>

On Mon, Jan 13, 2020 at 11:42:57AM +0100, Christian Brauner wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 13, 2020 at 11:47:11AM +0300, Kirill Tkhai wrote:

< snip >

> > > +SYSCALL_DEFINE5(process_madvise, int, pidfd, unsigned long, start,
> > > +		size_t, len_in, int, behavior, unsigned long, flags)
> > 
> > I don't like the interface. The fact we have pidfd does not mean,
> > we have to use it for new syscalls always. A user may want to set
> > madvise for specific pid from console and pass pid as argument.
> > pidfd would be an overkill in this case.
> > We usually call "kill -9 pid" from console. Why shouldn't process_madvise()
> > allow this?
> > 
> > I suggent to extend first argument to work with both pid and pidfd.
> > Look at what we have for waitid(idtype, id_t id, ...) for example:
> > 
> >        idtype == P_PID
> >               Wait for the child whose process ID matches id.
> > 
> >        idtype == P_PIDFD (since Linux 5.4)
> >               Wait for the child referred to by the PID file descriptor specified in id.  (See pidfd_open(2) for  further  information  on
> >               PID file descriptors.)
> > 
> > We may use @flags argument for this.
> 
> Sorry for chiming in just a comment. Overall, I don't particularly care
> how or if you integrate pidfd here. One thing I would like to point out
> is that we're working on a patch to place new features under pidfd
> specific flags. This e.g. means a pidfd would be only be able to be used
> for madvise operations (or getfd operations) if it was created with that
> specific flag set making it easier to share them with other processes.
> So if you integrate them here I would be quite thankful if you target
> the patchset for the v5.7 merge window, not for v5.6.

Hi Christian,
Sorry but I couldn't understand your point.
Could you clarify what you meant?

Thanks.