Re: [PATCH 4/8] mm: FOLL_DUMP replace FOLL_ANON

[Hugh Dickins]

On Thu, 10 Sep 2009, Minchan Kim wrote:
> > Â Â Â Â/*
> > Â Â Â Â * When core dumping an enormous anonymous area that nobody
> > - Â Â Â Â* has touched so far, we don't want to allocate page tables.
> > + Â Â Â Â* has touched so far, we don't want to allocate unnecessary pages or
> > + Â Â Â Â* page tables. ÂReturn error instead of NULL to skip handle_mm_fault,
> > + Â Â Â Â* then get_dump_page() will return NULL to leave a hole in the dump.
> > + Â Â Â Â* But we can only make this optimization where a hole would surely
> > + Â Â Â Â* be zero-filled if handle_mm_fault() actually did handle it.
> > Â Â Â Â */
> > - Â Â Â if (flags & FOLL_ANON) {
> > - Â Â Â Â Â Â Â page = ZERO_PAGE(0);
> > - Â Â Â Â Â Â Â if (flags & FOLL_GET)
> > - Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â get_page(page);
> > - Â Â Â Â Â Â Â BUG_ON(flags & FOLL_WRITE);
> > - Â Â Â }
> > + Â Â Â if ((flags & FOLL_DUMP) &&
> > + Â Â Â Â Â (!vma->vm_ops || !vma->vm_ops->fault))
> 
> How about adding comment about zero page use?

What kind of comment did you have in mind?
We used to use ZERO_PAGE there, but with this patch we're not using it.
I thought the comment above describes what we're doing well enough.

I may have kept too quiet about ZERO_PAGEs, knowing that a later patch
was going to change the story; but I don't see what needs saying here.

Hugh