Re: [PATCH RFC 01/15] uaccess: count pagefault_disable() levels in pagefault_disabled

From: Peter Zijlstra
Date: Thu May 07 2015 - 08:32:43 EST


On Thu, May 07, 2015 at 02:14:39PM +0200, David Hildenbrand wrote:
> Thanks :), well just to make sure I got your opinion on this correctly:
>
> 1. You think that 2 counters is the way to go for now

ack

> 2. You agree that we can't replace preempt_disable()+pagefault_disable() with
> preempt_disable() (CONFIG_PREEMPT stuff), so we need to have them separately

ack

> 3. We need in_atomic() (in the fault handlers only!) in addition to make sure we
> don't mess with irq contexts (In that case I would add a good comment to that
> place, describing why preempt_disable() won't help)

ack

> I think this is the right way to go because:
>
> a) This way we don't have to modify preempt_disable() logic (including
> PREEMPT_COUNT).
>
> b) There are not that many users relying on
> preempt_disable()+pagefault_disable() (compared to pure preempt_disable() or
> pagefault_disable() users), so the performance overhead of two cache lines
> should be small. Users only making use of one of them should see no difference
> in performance.

indeed.

> c) We correctly decouple preemption and pagefault logic. Therefore we can now
> preempt when pagefaults are disabled, which feels right.

Right, that's always been the intent of introducing pagefault_disable().
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