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[v19,0/5] Implement IOCTL to get and optionally clear info about PTEs

Message ID 20230615141144.665148-1-usama.anjum@collabora.com
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Series Implement IOCTL to get and optionally clear info about PTEs | expand

Message

Muhammad Usama Anjum June 15, 2023, 2:11 p.m. UTC 
*Changes in v19*
- Minor changes and interface updates

*Changes in v18*
- Rebase on top of next-20230613
- Minor updates

*Changes in v17*
- Rebase on top of next-20230606
- Minor improvements in PAGEMAP_SCAN IOCTL patch

*Changes in v16*
- Fix a corner case
- Add exclusive PM_SCAN_OP_WP back

*Changes in v15*
- Build fix (Add missed build fix in RESEND)

*Changes in v14*
- Fix build error caused by #ifdef added at last minute in some configs

*Changes in v13*
- Rebase on top of next-20230414
- Give-up on using uffd_wp_range() and write new helpers, flush tlb only
  once

*Changes in v12*
- Update and other memory types to UFFD_FEATURE_WP_ASYNC
- Rebaase on top of next-20230406
- Review updates

*Changes in v11*
- Rebase on top of next-20230307
- Base patches on UFFD_FEATURE_WP_UNPOPULATED
- Do a lot of cosmetic changes and review updates
- Remove ENGAGE_WP + !GET operation as it can be performed with
  UFFDIO_WRITEPROTECT

*Changes in v10*
- Add specific condition to return error if hugetlb is used with wp
  async
- Move changes in tools/include/uapi/linux/fs.h to separate patch
- Add documentation

*Changes in v9:*
- Correct fault resolution for userfaultfd wp async
- Fix build warnings and errors which were happening on some configs
- Simplify pagemap ioctl's code

*Changes in v8:*
- Update uffd async wp implementation
- Improve PAGEMAP_IOCTL implementation

*Changes in v7:*
- Add uffd wp async
- Update the IOCTL to use uffd under the hood instead of soft-dirty
  flags

*Motivation*
The real motivation for adding PAGEMAP_SCAN IOCTL is to emulate Windows
GetWriteWatch() syscall [1]. The GetWriteWatch{} retrieves the addresses of
the pages that are written to in a region of virtual memory.

This syscall is used in Windows applications and games etc. This syscall is
being emulated in pretty slow manner in userspace. Our purpose is to
enhance the kernel such that we translate it efficiently in a better way.
Currently some out of tree hack patches are being used to efficiently
emulate it in some kernels. We intend to replace those with these patches.
So the whole gaming on Linux can effectively get benefit from this. It
means there would be tons of users of this code.

CRIU use case [2] was mentioned by Andrei and Danylo:
> Use cases for migrating sparse VMAs are binaries sanitized with ASAN,
> MSAN or TSAN [3]. All of these sanitizers produce sparse mappings of
> shadow memory [4]. Being able to migrate such binaries allows to highly
> reduce the amount of work needed to identify and fix post-migration
> crashes, which happen constantly.

Andrei's defines the following uses of this code:
* it is more granular and allows us to track changed pages more
  effectively. The current interface can clear dirty bits for the entire
  process only. In addition, reading info about pages is a separate
  operation. It means we must freeze the process to read information
  about all its pages, reset dirty bits, only then we can start dumping
  pages. The information about pages becomes more and more outdated,
  while we are processing pages. The new interface solves both these
  downsides. First, it allows us to read pte bits and clear the
  soft-dirty bit atomically. It means that CRIU will not need to freeze
  processes to pre-dump their memory. Second, it clears soft-dirty bits
  for a specified region of memory. It means CRIU will have actual info
  about pages to the moment of dumping them.
* The new interface has to be much faster because basic page filtering
  is happening in the kernel. With the old interface, we have to read
  pagemap for each page.

*Implementation Evolution (Short Summary)*