There are four cases listed in pin_user_pages.rst. These are intended to help developers figure out whether to use get_user_pages*(), or pin_user_pages*(). However, the four cases do not cover all the situations. For example, drivers/vhost/vhost.c has a "pin, write to page, set page dirty, unpin" case.
Add a fifth case, to help explain that there is a general pattern that requires pin_user_pages*() API calls. Cc: Vlastimil Babka <vba...@suse.cz> Cc: Jan Kara <j...@suse.cz> Cc: Jérôme Glisse <jgli...@redhat.com> Cc: Dave Chinner <da...@fromorbit.com> Cc: Jonathan Corbet <cor...@lwn.net> Cc: linux-...@vger.kernel.org Cc: linux-fsde...@vger.kernel.org Signed-off-by: John Hubbard <jhubb...@nvidia.com> --- Documentation/core-api/pin_user_pages.rst | 18 ++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 18 insertions(+) diff --git a/Documentation/core-api/pin_user_pages.rst b/Documentation/core-api/pin_user_pages.rst index 4675b04e8829..6068266dd303 100644 --- a/Documentation/core-api/pin_user_pages.rst +++ b/Documentation/core-api/pin_user_pages.rst @@ -171,6 +171,24 @@ If only struct page data (as opposed to the actual memory contents that a page is tracking) is affected, then normal GUP calls are sufficient, and neither flag needs to be set. +CASE 5: Pinning in order to write to the data within the page +------------------------------------------------------------- +Even though neither DMA nor Direct IO is involved, just a simple case of "pin, +write to a page's data, unpin" can cause a problem. Case 5 may be considered a +superset of Case 1, plus Case 2, plus anything that invokes that pattern. In +other words, if the code is neither Case 1 nor Case 2, it may still require +FOLL_PIN, for patterns like this: + +Correct (uses FOLL_PIN calls): + pin_user_pages() + write to the data within the pages + unpin_user_pages() + +INCORRECT (uses FOLL_GET calls): + get_user_pages() + write to the data within the pages + put_page() + page_maybe_dma_pinned(): the whole point of pinning =================================================== -- 2.26.2
