[PATCH] mm: tracking shared dirty pages

Tracking of dirty pages in shared writeable mmap()s.

The idea is simple: write protect clean shared writeable pages, catch the
write-fault, make writeable and set dirty.  On page write-back clean all the
PTE dirty bits and write protect them once again.

The implementation is a tad harder, mainly because the default
backing_dev_info capabilities were too loosely maintained.  Hence it is not
enough to test the backing_dev_info for cap_account_dirty.

The current heuristic is as follows, a VMA is eligible when:
 - its shared writeable
    (vm_flags & (VM_WRITE|VM_SHARED)) == (VM_WRITE|VM_SHARED)
 - it is not a 'special' mapping
    (vm_flags & (VM_PFNMAP|VM_INSERTPAGE)) == 0
 - the backing_dev_info is cap_account_dirty
    mapping_cap_account_dirty(vma->vm_file->f_mapping)
 - f_op->mmap() didn't change the default page protection

Page from remap_pfn_range() are explicitly excluded because their COW
semantics are already horrid enough (see vm_normal_page() in do_wp_page()) and
because they don't have a backing store anyway.

mprotect() is taught about the new behaviour as well.  However it overrides
the last condition.

Cleaning the pages on write-back is done with page_mkclean() a new rmap call.
It can be called on any page, but is currently only implemented for mapped
pages, if the page is found the be of a VMA that accounts dirty pages it will
also wrprotect the PTE.

Finally, in fs/buffers.c:try_to_free_buffers(); remove clear_page_dirty() from
under ->private_lock.  This seems to be safe, since ->private_lock is used to
serialize access to the buffers, not the page itself.  This is needed because
clear_page_dirty() will call into page_mkclean() and would thereby violate
locking order.

[dhowells@redhat.com: Provide a page_mkclean() implementation for NOMMU]
Signed-off-by: Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@chello.nl>
Cc: Hugh Dickins <hugh@veritas.com>
Signed-off-by: David Howells <dhowells@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>

1 files changed, 8 insertions, 13 deletions

diff --git a/mm/mprotect.c b/mm/mprotect.c
index 638edab..367b7f6 100644
--- a/mm/mprotect.c
+++ b/mm/mprotect.c
@@ -123,8 +123,6 @@ mprotect_fixup(struct vm_area_struct *vma, struct vm_area_struct **pprev,
 	unsigned long oldflags = vma->vm_flags;
 	long nrpages = (end - start) >> PAGE_SHIFT;
 	unsigned long charged = 0;
-	unsigned int mask;
-	pgprot_t newprot;
 	pgoff_t pgoff;
 	int error;
 
@@ -176,24 +174,21 @@ mprotect_fixup(struct vm_area_struct *vma, struct vm_area_struct **pprev,
 	}
 
 success:
-	/* Don't make the VMA automatically writable if it's shared, but the
-	 * backer wishes to know when pages are first written to */
-	mask = VM_READ|VM_WRITE|VM_EXEC|VM_SHARED;
-	if (vma->vm_ops && vma->vm_ops->page_mkwrite)
-		mask &= ~VM_SHARED;
-
-	newprot = protection_map[newflags & mask];
-
 	/*
 	 * vm_flags and vm_page_prot are protected by the mmap_sem
 	 * held in write mode.
 	 */
 	vma->vm_flags = newflags;
-	vma->vm_page_prot = newprot;
+	vma->vm_page_prot = protection_map[newflags &
+		(VM_READ|VM_WRITE|VM_EXEC|VM_SHARED)];
+	if (vma_wants_writenotify(vma))
+		vma->vm_page_prot = protection_map[newflags &
+			(VM_READ|VM_WRITE|VM_EXEC)];
+
 	if (is_vm_hugetlb_page(vma))
-		hugetlb_change_protection(vma, start, end, newprot);
+		hugetlb_change_protection(vma, start, end, vma->vm_page_prot);
 	else
-		change_protection(vma, start, end, newprot);
+		change_protection(vma, start, end, vma->vm_page_prot);
 	vm_stat_account(mm, oldflags, vma->vm_file, -nrpages);
 	vm_stat_account(mm, newflags, vma->vm_file, nrpages);
 	return 0;