Re: [PATCH 00/10] mm/mremap: permit mremap() move of multiple VMAs

[Hugh Dickins]

On Mon, 7 Jul 2025, Lorenzo Stoakes wrote:

> Historically we've made it a uAPI requirement that mremap() may only
> operate on a single VMA at a time.
> 
> For instances where VMAs need to be resized, this makes sense, as it
> becomes very difficult to determine what a user actually wants should they
> indicate a desire to expand or shrink the size of multiple VMAs (truncate?
> Adjust sizes individually? Some other strategy?).
> 
> However, in instances where a user is moving VMAs, it is restrictive to
> disallow this.
> 
> This is especially the case when anonymous mapping remap may or may not be
> mergeable depending on whether VMAs have or have not been faulted due to
> anon_vma assignment and folio index alignment with vma->vm_pgoff.
> 
> Often this can result in surprising impact where a moved region is faulted,
> then moved back and a user fails to observe a merge from otherwise
> compatible, adjacent VMAs.
> 
> This change allows such cases to work without the user having to be
> cognizant of whether a prior mremap() move or other VMA operations has
> resulted in VMA fragmentation.
> 
> In order to do this, this series performs a large amount of refactoring,
> most pertinently - grouping sanity checks together, separately those that
> check input parameters and those relating to VMAs.
> 
> we also simplify the post-mmap lock drop processing for uffd and mlock()'d
> VMAs.
> 
> With this done, we can then fairly straightforwardly implement this
> functionality.
> 
> This works exclusively for mremap() invocations which specify
> MREMAP_FIXED. It is not compatible with VMAs which use userfaultfd, as the
> notification of the userland fault handler would require us to drop the
> mmap lock.
> 
> The input and output addresses ranges must not overlap. We carefully
> account for moves which would result in VMA merges or would otherwise
> result in VMA iterator invalidation.

Applause!

No way shall I review this, but each time I've seen an mremap series
from Lorenzo go by, I've wanted to say "but wouldn't it be better to...";
but it felt too impertinent to prod you in a direction I'd never dare
take myself (and quite likely that you had already tried, but found it
fundamentally impossible).

Thank you, yes, this is a very welcome step forward.

Hugh