tree c8cb66c28c7603cafab060bc57b55c0cef98c36e
parent e30331ff05f689f8f2faeb51664299c4d7841f15
author Ross Zwisler <ross.zwisler@linux.intel.com> 1504739923 -0700
committer Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> 1504744044 -0700

dax: use common 4k zero page for dax mmap reads

When servicing mmap() reads from file holes the current DAX code
allocates a page cache page of all zeroes and places the struct page
pointer in the mapping->page_tree radix tree.

This has three major drawbacks:

1) It consumes memory unnecessarily. For every 4k page that is read via
   a DAX mmap() over a hole, we allocate a new page cache page. This
   means that if you read 1GiB worth of pages, you end up using 1GiB of
   zeroed memory. This is easily visible by looking at the overall
   memory consumption of the system or by looking at /proc/[pid]/smaps:

	7f62e72b3000-7f63272b3000 rw-s 00000000 103:00 12   /root/dax/data
	Size:            1048576 kB
	Rss:             1048576 kB
	Pss:             1048576 kB
	Shared_Clean:          0 kB
	Shared_Dirty:          0 kB
	Private_Clean:   1048576 kB
	Private_Dirty:         0 kB
	Referenced:      1048576 kB
	Anonymous:             0 kB
	LazyFree:              0 kB
	AnonHugePages:         0 kB
	ShmemPmdMapped:        0 kB
	Shared_Hugetlb:        0 kB
	Private_Hugetlb:       0 kB
	Swap:                  0 kB
	SwapPss:               0 kB
	KernelPageSize:        4 kB
	MMUPageSize:           4 kB
	Locked:                0 kB

2) It is slower than using a common zero page because each page fault
   has more work to do. Instead of just inserting a common zero page we
   have to allocate a page cache page, zero it, and then insert it. Here
   are the average latencies of dax_load_hole() as measured by ftrace on
   a random test box:

    Old method, using zeroed page cache pages:	3.4 us
    New method, using the common 4k zero page:	0.8 us

   This was the average latency over 1 GiB of sequential reads done by
   this simple fio script:

     [global]
     size=1G
     filename=/root/dax/data
     fallocate=none
     [io]
     rw=read
     ioengine=mmap

3) The fact that we had to check for both DAX exceptional entries and
   for page cache pages in the radix tree made the DAX code more
   complex.

Solve these issues by following the lead of the DAX PMD code and using a
common 4k zero page instead.  As with the PMD code we will now insert a
DAX exceptional entry into the radix tree instead of a struct page
pointer which allows us to remove all the special casing in the DAX
code.

Note that we do still pretty aggressively check for regular pages in the
DAX radix tree, especially where we take action based on the bits set in
the page.  If we ever find a regular page in our radix tree now that
most likely means that someone besides DAX is inserting pages (which has
happened lots of times in the past), and we want to find that out early
and fail loudly.

This solution also removes the extra memory consumption.  Here is that
same /proc/[pid]/smaps after 1GiB of reading from a hole with the new
code:

	7f2054a74000-7f2094a74000 rw-s 00000000 103:00 12   /root/dax/data
	Size:            1048576 kB
	Rss:                   0 kB
	Pss:                   0 kB
	Shared_Clean:          0 kB
	Shared_Dirty:          0 kB
	Private_Clean:         0 kB
	Private_Dirty:         0 kB
	Referenced:            0 kB
	Anonymous:             0 kB
	LazyFree:              0 kB
	AnonHugePages:         0 kB
	ShmemPmdMapped:        0 kB
	Shared_Hugetlb:        0 kB
	Private_Hugetlb:       0 kB
	Swap:                  0 kB
	SwapPss:               0 kB
	KernelPageSize:        4 kB
	MMUPageSize:           4 kB
	Locked:                0 kB

Overall system memory consumption is similarly improved.

Another major change is that we remove dax_pfn_mkwrite() from our fault
flow, and instead rely on the page fault itself to make the PTE dirty
and writeable.  The following description from the patch adding the
vm_insert_mixed_mkwrite() call explains this a little more:

   "To be able to use the common 4k zero page in DAX we need to have our
    PTE fault path look more like our PMD fault path where a PTE entry
    can be marked as dirty and writeable as it is first inserted rather
    than waiting for a follow-up dax_pfn_mkwrite() =>
    finish_mkwrite_fault() call.

    Right now we can rely on having a dax_pfn_mkwrite() call because we
    can distinguish between these two cases in do_wp_page():

            case 1: 4k zero page => writable DAX storage
            case 2: read-only DAX storage => writeable DAX storage

    This distinction is made by via vm_normal_page(). vm_normal_page()
    returns false for the common 4k zero page, though, just as it does
    for DAX ptes. Instead of special casing the DAX + 4k zero page case
    we will simplify our DAX PTE page fault sequence so that it matches
    our DAX PMD sequence, and get rid of the dax_pfn_mkwrite() helper.
    We will instead use dax_iomap_fault() to handle write-protection
    faults.

    This means that insert_pfn() needs to follow the lead of
    insert_pfn_pmd() and allow us to pass in a 'mkwrite' flag. If
    'mkwrite' is set insert_pfn() will do the work that was previously
    done by wp_page_reuse() as part of the dax_pfn_mkwrite() call path"

Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20170724170616.25810-4-ross.zwisler@linux.intel.com
Signed-off-by: Ross Zwisler <ross.zwisler@linux.intel.com>
Reviewed-by: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>
Cc: "Darrick J. Wong" <darrick.wong@oracle.com>
Cc: "Theodore Ts'o" <tytso@mit.edu>
Cc: Alexander Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>
Cc: Andreas Dilger <adilger.kernel@dilger.ca>
Cc: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>
Cc: Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@intel.com>
Cc: Dave Chinner <david@fromorbit.com>
Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@redhat.com>
Cc: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
Cc: Matthew Wilcox <mawilcox@microsoft.com>
Cc: Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org>
Cc: Kirill A. Shutemov <kirill.shutemov@linux.intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>