mm/uffd: UFFD_FEATURE_WP_UNPOPULATED
Patch series "mm/uffd: Add feature bit UFFD_FEATURE_WP_UNPOPULATED", v4.
The new feature bit makes anonymous memory acts the same as file memory on
userfaultfd-wp in that it'll also wr-protect none ptes.
It can be useful in two cases:
(1) Uffd-wp app that needs to wr-protect none ptes like QEMU snapshot,
so pre-fault can be replaced by enabling this flag and speed up
protections
(2) It helps to implement async uffd-wp mode that Muhammad is working on [1]
It's debatable whether this is the most ideal solution because with the
new feature bit set, wr-protect none pte needs to pre-populate the
pgtables to the last level (PAGE_SIZE). But it seems fine so far to
service either purpose above, so we can leave optimizations for later.
The series brings pte markers to anonymous memory too. There's some
change in the common mm code path in the 1st patch, great to have some eye
looking at it, but hopefully they're still relatively straightforward.
This patch (of 2):
This is a new feature that controls how uffd-wp handles none ptes. When
it's set, the kernel will handle anonymous memory the same way as file
memory, by allowing the user to wr-protect unpopulated ptes.
File memories handles none ptes consistently by allowing wr-protecting of
none ptes because of the unawareness of page cache being exist or not.
For anonymous it was not as persistent because we used to assume that we
don't need protections on none ptes or known zero pages.
One use case of such a feature bit was VM live snapshot, where if without
wr-protecting empty ptes the snapshot can contain random rubbish in the
holes of the anonymous memory, which can cause misbehave of the guest when
the guest OS assumes the pages should be all zeros.
QEMU worked it around by pre-populate the section with reads to fill in
zero page entries before starting the whole snapshot process [1].
Recently there's another need raised on using userfaultfd wr-protect for
detecting dirty pages (to replace soft-dirty in some cases) [2]. In that
case if without being able to wr-protect none ptes by default, the dirty
info can get lost, since we cannot treat every none pte to be dirty (the
current design is identify a page dirty based on uffd-wp bit being
cleared).
In general, we want to be able to wr-protect empty ptes too even for
anonymous.
This patch implements UFFD_FEATURE_WP_UNPOPULATED so that it'll make
uffd-wp handling on none ptes being consistent no matter what the memory
type is underneath. It doesn't have any impact on file memories so far
because we already have pte markers taking care of that. So it only
affects anonymous.
The feature bit is by default off, so the old behavior will be maintained.
Sometimes it may be wanted because the wr-protect of none ptes will
contain overheads not only during UFFDIO_WRITEPROTECT (by applying pte
markers to anonymous), but also on creating the pgtables to store the pte
markers. So there's potentially less chance of using thp on the first
fault for a none pmd or larger than a pmd.
The major implementation part is teaching the whole kernel to understand
pte markers even for anonymously mapped ranges, meanwhile allowing the
UFFDIO_WRITEPROTECT ioctl to apply pte markers for anonymous too when the
new feature bit is set.
Note that even if the patch subject starts with mm/uffd, there're a few
small refactors to major mm path of handling anonymous page faults. But
they should be straightforward.
With WP_UNPOPUATED, application like QEMU can avoid pre-read faults all
the memory before wr-protect during taking a live snapshot. Quotting from
Muhammad's test result here [3] based on a simple program [4]:
(1) With huge page disabled
echo madvise > /sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/enabled
./uffd_wp_perf
Test DEFAULT: 4
Test PRE-READ: 1111453 (pre-fault 1101011)
Test MADVISE: 278276 (pre-fault 266378)
Test WP-UNPOPULATE: 11712
(2) With Huge page enabled
echo always > /sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/enabled
./uffd_wp_perf
Test DEFAULT: 4
Test PRE-READ: 22521 (pre-fault 22348)
Test MADVISE: 4909 (pre-fault 4743)
Test WP-UNPOPULATE: 14448
There'll be a great perf boost for no-thp case, while for thp enabled with
extreme case of all-thp-zero WP_UNPOPULATED can be slower than MADVISE,
but that's low possibility in reality, also the overhead was not reduced
but postponed until a follow up write on any huge zero thp, so potentially
it is faster by making the follow up writes slower.
[1] https://lore.kernel.org/all/20210401092226.102804-4-andrey.gruzdev@virtuozzo.com/
[2] https://lore.kernel.org/all/Y+v2HJ8+3i%2FKzDBu@x1n/
[3] https://lore.kernel.org/all/d0eb0a13-16dc-1ac1-653a-78b7273781e3@collabora.com/
[4] https://github.com/xzpeter/clibs/blob/master/uffd-test/uffd-wp-perf.c
[peterx@redhat.com: comment changes, oneliner fix to khugepaged]
Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/ZB2/8jPhD3fpx5U8@x1n
Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20230309223711.823547-1-peterx@redhat.com
Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20230309223711.823547-2-peterx@redhat.comSigned-off-by: 
Peter Xu <peterx@redhat.com>
Acked-by: 
David Hildenbrand <david@redhat.com>
Cc: Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@redhat.com>
Cc: Axel Rasmussen <axelrasmussen@google.com>
Cc: Mike Rapoport <rppt@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Cc: Muhammad Usama Anjum <usama.anjum@collabora.com>
Cc: Nadav Amit <nadav.amit@gmail.com>
Cc: Paul Gofman <pgofman@codeweavers.com>
Signed-off-by: 
Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
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