mm: retry page fault when blocking on disk transfer

This change reduces mmap_sem hold times that are caused by waiting for
disk transfers when accessing file mapped VMAs.

It introduces the VM_FAULT_ALLOW_RETRY flag, which indicates that the call
site wants mmap_sem to be released if blocking on a pending disk transfer.
In that case, filemap_fault() returns the VM_FAULT_RETRY status bit and
do_page_fault() will then re-acquire mmap_sem and retry the page fault.

It is expected that the retry will hit the same page which will now be
cached, and thus it will complete with a low mmap_sem hold time.

Tests:

- microbenchmark: thread A mmaps a large file and does random read accesses
  to the mmaped area - achieves about 55 iterations/s. Thread B does
  mmap/munmap in a loop at a separate location - achieves 55 iterations/s
  before, 15000 iterations/s after.

- We are seeing related effects in some applications in house, which show
  significant performance regressions when running without this change.

[akpm@linux-foundation.org: fix warning & crash]
Signed-off-by: Michel Lespinasse <walken@google.com>
Acked-by: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com>
Acked-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: Nick Piggin <nickpiggin@yahoo.com.au>
Reviewed-by: Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@intel.com>
Cc: Ying Han <yinghan@google.com>
Cc: Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@chello.nl>
Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Acked-by: "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com>
Cc: <linux-arch@vger.kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>

1 files changed, 26 insertions, 12 deletions

diff --git a/arch/x86/mm/fault.c b/arch/x86/mm/fault.c
index 852b319..9b2345c 100644
--- a/arch/x86/mm/fault.c
+++ b/arch/x86/mm/fault.c
@@ -956,8 +956,10 @@ do_page_fault(struct pt_regs *regs, unsigned long error_code)
 	struct task_struct *tsk;
 	unsigned long address;
 	struct mm_struct *mm;
-	int write;
 	int fault;
+	int write = error_code & PF_WRITE;
+	unsigned int flags = FAULT_FLAG_ALLOW_RETRY |
+					(write ? FAULT_FLAG_WRITE : 0);
 
 	tsk = current;
 	mm = tsk->mm;
@@ -1068,6 +1070,7 @@ do_page_fault(struct pt_regs *regs, unsigned long error_code)
 			bad_area_nosemaphore(regs, error_code, address);
 			return;
 		}
+retry:
 		down_read(&mm->mmap_sem);
 	} else {
 		/*
@@ -1111,8 +1114,6 @@ do_page_fault(struct pt_regs *regs, unsigned long error_code)
 	 * we can handle it..
 	 */
 good_area:
-	write = error_code & PF_WRITE;
-
 	if (unlikely(access_error(error_code, write, vma))) {
 		bad_area_access_error(regs, error_code, address);
 		return;
@@ -1123,21 +1124,34 @@ good_area:
 	 * make sure we exit gracefully rather than endlessly redo
 	 * the fault:
 	 */
-	fault = handle_mm_fault(mm, vma, address, write ? FAULT_FLAG_WRITE : 0);
+	fault = handle_mm_fault(mm, vma, address, flags);
 
 	if (unlikely(fault & VM_FAULT_ERROR)) {
 		mm_fault_error(regs, error_code, address, fault);
 		return;
 	}
 
-	if (fault & VM_FAULT_MAJOR) {
-		tsk->maj_flt++;
-		perf_sw_event(PERF_COUNT_SW_PAGE_FAULTS_MAJ, 1, 0,
-				     regs, address);
-	} else {
-		tsk->min_flt++;
-		perf_sw_event(PERF_COUNT_SW_PAGE_FAULTS_MIN, 1, 0,
-				     regs, address);
+	/*
+	 * Major/minor page fault accounting is only done on the
+	 * initial attempt. If we go through a retry, it is extremely
+	 * likely that the page will be found in page cache at that point.
+	 */
+	if (flags & FAULT_FLAG_ALLOW_RETRY) {
+		if (fault & VM_FAULT_MAJOR) {
+			tsk->maj_flt++;
+			perf_sw_event(PERF_COUNT_SW_PAGE_FAULTS_MAJ, 1, 0,
+				      regs, address);
+		} else {
+			tsk->min_flt++;
+			perf_sw_event(PERF_COUNT_SW_PAGE_FAULTS_MIN, 1, 0,
+				      regs, address);
+		}
+		if (fault & VM_FAULT_RETRY) {
+			/* Clear FAULT_FLAG_ALLOW_RETRY to avoid any risk
+			 * of starvation. */
+			flags &= ~FAULT_FLAG_ALLOW_RETRY;
+			goto retry;
+		}
 	}
 
 	check_v8086_mode(regs, address, tsk);