mlock: downgrade mmap sem while populating mlocked regions

We need to hold the mmap_sem for write to initiatate mlock()/munlock()
because we may need to merge/split vmas.  However, this can lead to very
long lock hold times attempting to fault in a large memory region to mlock
it into memory.  This can hold off other faults against the mm
[multithreaded tasks] and other scans of the mm, such as via /proc.  To
alleviate this, downgrade the mmap_sem to read mode during the population
of the region for locking.  This is especially the case if we need to
reclaim memory to lock down the region.  We [probably?] don't need to do
this for unlocking as all of the pages should be resident--they're already
mlocked.

Now, the caller's of the mlock functions [mlock_fixup() and
mlock_vma_pages_range()] expect the mmap_sem to be returned in write mode.
 Changing all callers appears to be way too much effort at this point.
So, restore write mode before returning.  Note that this opens a window
where the mmap list could change in a multithreaded process.  So, at least
for mlock_fixup(), where we could be called in a loop over multiple vmas,
we check that a vma still exists at the start address and that vma still
covers the page range [start,end).  If not, we return an error, -EAGAIN,
and let the caller deal with it.

Return -EAGAIN from mlock_vma_pages_range() function and mlock_fixup() if
the vma at 'start' disappears or changes so that the page range
[start,end) is no longer contained in the vma.  Again, let the caller deal
with it.  Looks like only sys_remap_file_pages() [via mmap_region()]
should actually care.

With this patch, I no longer see processes like ps(1) blocked for seconds
or minutes at a time waiting for a large [multiple gigabyte] region to be
locked down.  However, I occassionally see delays while unlocking or
unmapping a large mlocked region.  Should we also downgrade the mmap_sem
for the unlock path?

Signed-off-by: Lee Schermerhorn <lee.schermerhorn@hp.com>
Signed-off-by: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>

0 files changed, 0 insertions, 0 deletions