Re: [PATCH v8 1/4] mm/madvise: pass task and mm to do_madvise

On Mon, 22 Jun 2020, Minchan Kim wrote:

Patch series "introduce memory hinting API for external process", v8.

Now, we have MADV_PAGEOUT and MADV_COLD as madvise hinting API.  With
that, application could give hints to kernel what memory range are
preferred to be reclaimed.  However, in some platform(e.g., Android), the
information required to make the hinting decision is not known to the app.
Instead, it is known to a centralized userspace daemon(e.g.,
ActivityManagerService), and that daemon must be able to initiate reclaim
on its own without any app involvement.

To solve the concern, this patch introduces new syscall -
process_madvise(2).  Bascially, it's same with madvise(2) syscall but it
has some differences.

1. It needs pidfd of target process to provide the hint

2.  It supports only MADV_{COLD|PAGEOUT|MERGEABLE|UNMEREABLE} at this
   moment.  Other hints in madvise will be opened when there are explicit
   requests from community to prevent unexpected bugs we couldn't support.

3.  Only privileged processes can do something for other process's
   address space.

For more detail of the new API, please see "mm: introduce external memory
hinting API" description in this patchset.

This patch (of 4):

In upcoming patches, do_madvise will be called from external process
context so we shouldn't asssume "current" is always hinted process's
task_struct.

Furthermore, we must not access mm_struct via task->mm, but obtain it
via access_mm() once (in the following patch) and only use that pointer
[1], so pass it to do_madvise() as well.  Note the vma->vm_mm pointers
are safe, so we can use them further down the call stack.

And let's pass *current* and current->mm as arguments of do_madvise so
it shouldn't change existing behavior but prepare next patch to make
review easy.

Note: io_madvise passes NULL as target_task argument of do_madvise because
it couldn't know who is target.

[1] http://lore.kernel.org/r/CAG48ez27=pwm5m_N_988xT1huO7g7h6arTQL44zev6TD-h-7Tg@mail.gmail.com (local)

[vbabka@suse.cz: changelog tweak]
[minchan@kernel.org: use current->mm for io_uring]
  Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20200423145215.72666-1-minchan@kernel.org
[akpm@linux-foundation.org: fix it for upstream changes]
[akpm@linux-foundation.org: whoops]
[rdunlap@infradead.org: add missing includes]
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20200302193630.68771-2-minchan@kernel.org
Signed-off-by: Minchan Kim <minchan@kernel.org>
Reviewed-by: Suren Baghdasaryan <surenb@google.com>
Reviewed-by: Vlastimil Babka <redacted>
Cc: Jens Axboe <axboe@kernel.dk>
Cc: Jann Horn <jannh@google.com>
Cc: Tim Murray <redacted>
Cc: Daniel Colascione <redacted>
Cc: Sandeep Patil <redacted>
Cc: Sonny Rao <redacted>
Cc: Brian Geffon <redacted>
Cc: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com>
Cc: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org>
Cc: Shakeel Butt <redacted>
Cc: John Dias <redacted>
Cc: Joel Fernandes <redacted>
Cc: Alexander Duyck <redacted>
Cc: SeongJae Park <redacted>
Cc: Christian Brauner <christian@brauner.io>
Cc: Kirill Tkhai <redacted>
Cc: Oleksandr Natalenko <redacted>
Cc: SeongJae Park <redacted>
Cc: Christian Brauner <redacted>
Cc: <redacted>

Acked-by: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com>