userfaultfd: documentation update

Add documentation about new userfaultfd features and events

Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/1487716431-5551-1-git-send-email-rppt@linux.vnet.ibm.com
Signed-off-by: Mike Rapoport <rppt@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Reviewed-by: Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@redhat.com>
Cc: "Dr. David Alan Gilbert" <dgilbert@redhat.com>
Cc: Hillf Danton <hillf.zj@alibaba-inc.com>
Cc: Mike Kravetz <mike.kravetz@oracle.com>
Cc: Pavel Emelyanov <xemul@virtuozzo.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
This commit is contained in:
Mike Rapoport 2017-02-24 14:58:34 -08:00 committed by Linus Torvalds
parent 96333187ab
commit 5a02026d39

View file

@ -54,6 +54,26 @@ uffdio_api.features and uffdio_api.ioctls two 64bit bitmasks of
respectively all the available features of the read(2) protocol and
the generic ioctl available.
The uffdio_api.features bitmask returned by the UFFDIO_API ioctl
defines what memory types are supported by the userfaultfd and what
events, except page fault notifications, may be generated.
If the kernel supports registering userfaultfd ranges on hugetlbfs
virtual memory areas, UFFD_FEATURE_MISSING_HUGETLBFS will be set in
uffdio_api.features. Similarly, UFFD_FEATURE_MISSING_SHMEM will be
set if the kernel supports registering userfaultfd ranges on shared
memory (covering all shmem APIs, i.e. tmpfs, IPCSHM, /dev/zero
MAP_SHARED, memfd_create, etc).
The userland application that wants to use userfaultfd with hugetlbfs
or shared memory need to set the corresponding flag in
uffdio_api.features to enable those features.
If the userland desires to receive notifications for events other than
page faults, it has to verify that uffdio_api.features has appropriate
UFFD_FEATURE_EVENT_* bits set. These events are described in more
detail below in "Non-cooperative userfaultfd" section.
Once the userfaultfd has been enabled the UFFDIO_REGISTER ioctl should
be invoked (if present in the returned uffdio_api.ioctls bitmask) to
register a memory range in the userfaultfd by setting the
@ -142,3 +162,72 @@ course the bitmap is updated accordingly. It's also useful to avoid
sending the same page twice (in case the userfault is read by the
postcopy thread just before UFFDIO_COPY|ZEROPAGE runs in the migration
thread).
== Non-cooperative userfaultfd ==
When the userfaultfd is monitored by an external manager, the manager
must be able to track changes in the process virtual memory
layout. Userfaultfd can notify the manager about such changes using
the same read(2) protocol as for the page fault notifications. The
manager has to explicitly enable these events by setting appropriate
bits in uffdio_api.features passed to UFFDIO_API ioctl:
UFFD_FEATURE_EVENT_EXIT - enable notification about exit() of the
non-cooperative process. When the monitored process exits, the uffd
manager will get UFFD_EVENT_EXIT.
UFFD_FEATURE_EVENT_FORK - enable userfaultfd hooks for fork(). When
this feature is enabled, the userfaultfd context of the parent process
is duplicated into the newly created process. The manager receives
UFFD_EVENT_FORK with file descriptor of the new userfaultfd context in
the uffd_msg.fork.
UFFD_FEATURE_EVENT_REMAP - enable notifications about mremap()
calls. When the non-cooperative process moves a virtual memory area to
a different location, the manager will receive UFFD_EVENT_REMAP. The
uffd_msg.remap will contain the old and new addresses of the area and
its original length.
UFFD_FEATURE_EVENT_REMOVE - enable notifications about
madvise(MADV_REMOVE) and madvise(MADV_DONTNEED) calls. The event
UFFD_EVENT_REMOVE will be generated upon these calls to madvise. The
uffd_msg.remove will contain start and end addresses of the removed
area.
UFFD_FEATURE_EVENT_UNMAP - enable notifications about memory
unmapping. The manager will get UFFD_EVENT_UNMAP with uffd_msg.remove
containing start and end addresses of the unmapped area.
Although the UFFD_FEATURE_EVENT_REMOVE and UFFD_FEATURE_EVENT_UNMAP
are pretty similar, they quite differ in the action expected from the
userfaultfd manager. In the former case, the virtual memory is
removed, but the area is not, the area remains monitored by the
userfaultfd, and if a page fault occurs in that area it will be
delivered to the manager. The proper resolution for such page fault is
to zeromap the faulting address. However, in the latter case, when an
area is unmapped, either explicitly (with munmap() system call), or
implicitly (e.g. during mremap()), the area is removed and in turn the
userfaultfd context for such area disappears too and the manager will
not get further userland page faults from the removed area. Still, the
notification is required in order to prevent manager from using
UFFDIO_COPY on the unmapped area.
Unlike userland page faults which have to be synchronous and require
explicit or implicit wakeup, all the events are delivered
asynchronously and the non-cooperative process resumes execution as
soon as manager executes read(). The userfaultfd manager should
carefully synchronize calls to UFFDIO_COPY with the events
processing. To aid the synchronization, the UFFDIO_COPY ioctl will
return -ENOSPC when the monitored process exits at the time of
UFFDIO_COPY, and -ENOENT, when the non-cooperative process has changed
its virtual memory layout simultaneously with outstanding UFFDIO_COPY
operation.
The current asynchronous model of the event delivery is optimal for
single threaded non-cooperative userfaultfd manager implementations. A
synchronous event delivery model can be added later as a new
userfaultfd feature to facilitate multithreading enhancements of the
non cooperative manager, for example to allow UFFDIO_COPY ioctls to
run in parallel to the event reception. Single threaded
implementations should continue to use the current async event
delivery model instead.