Re: process creation time increases linearly with shmem

From: Nick Piggin
Date: Thu Aug 25 2005 - 09:35:44 EST


Andi Kleen wrote:
Would it be worth trying to do something like this?


Maybe. Shouldn't be very hard though - you just need to check if the VMA is backed by an object and if yes don't call copy_page_range for it.

I think it just needs (untested)


I think you need to check for MAP_SHARED as well, because
MAP_PRIVATE mapping of a file could be modified in parent.

See patch I posted just now.

Also, do you need any special case for hugetlb?


Index: linux-2.6.13-rc5-misc/kernel/fork.c
===================================================================
--- linux-2.6.13-rc5-misc.orig/kernel/fork.c
+++ linux-2.6.13-rc5-misc/kernel/fork.c
@@ -265,7 +265,8 @@ static inline int dup_mmap(struct mm_str
rb_parent = &tmp->vm_rb;
mm->map_count++;
- retval = copy_page_range(mm, current->mm, tmp);
+ if (!file && !is_vm_hugetlb_page(vma))
+ retval = copy_page_range(mm, current->mm, tmp);
spin_unlock(&mm->page_table_lock);
if (tmp->vm_ops && tmp->vm_ops->open)

But I'm not sure it's a good idea in all cases. Would need a lot of benchmarking at least.


Yep. I'm sure it must have come up in the past, and Linus
must have said something about best-for-most.

--
SUSE Labs, Novell Inc.

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