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authorLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>2019-03-16 13:05:32 -0700
committerLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>2019-03-16 13:05:32 -0700
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Merge tag 'devdax-for-5.1' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/nvdimm/nvdimm
Pull device-dax updates from Dan Williams: "New device-dax infrastructure to allow persistent memory and other "reserved" / performance differentiated memories, to be assigned to the core-mm as "System RAM". Some users want to use persistent memory as additional volatile memory. They are willing to cope with potential performance differences, for example between DRAM and 3D Xpoint, and want to use typical Linux memory management apis rather than a userspace memory allocator layered over an mmap() of a dax file. The administration model is to decide how much Persistent Memory (pmem) to use as System RAM, create a device-dax-mode namespace of that size, and then assign it to the core-mm. The rationale for device-dax is that it is a generic memory-mapping driver that can be layered over any "special purpose" memory, not just pmem. On subsequent boots udev rules can be used to restore the memory assignment. One implication of using pmem as RAM is that mlock() no longer keeps data off persistent media. For this reason it is recommended to enable NVDIMM Security (previously merged for 5.0) to encrypt pmem contents at rest. We considered making this recommendation an actively enforced requirement, but in the end decided to leave it as a distribution / administrator policy to allow for emulation and test environments that lack security capable NVDIMMs. Summary: - Replace the /sys/class/dax device model with /sys/bus/dax, and include a compat driver so distributions can opt-in to the new ABI. - Allow for an alternative driver for the device-dax address-range - Introduce the 'kmem' driver to hotplug / assign a device-dax address-range to the core-mm. - Arrange for the device-dax target-node to be onlined so that the newly added memory range can be uniquely referenced by numa apis" NOTE! I'm not entirely happy with the whole "PMEM as RAM" model because we currently have special - and very annoying rules in the kernel about accessing PMEM only with the "MC safe" accessors, because machine checks inside the regular repeat string copy functions can be fatal in some (not described) circumstances. And apparently the PMEM modules can cause that a lot more than regular RAM. The argument is that this happens because PMEM doesn't necessarily get scrubbed at boot like RAM does, but that is planned to be added for the user space tooling. Quoting Dan from another email: "The exposure can be reduced in the volatile-RAM case by scanning for and clearing errors before it is onlined as RAM. The userspace tooling for that can be in place before v5.1-final. There's also runtime notifications of errors via acpi_nfit_uc_error_notify() from background scrubbers on the DIMM devices. With that mechanism the kernel could proactively clear newly discovered poison in the volatile case, but that would be additional development more suitable for v5.2. I understand the concern, and the need to highlight this issue by tapping the brakes on feature development, but I don't see PMEM as RAM making the situation worse when the exposure is also there via DAX in the PMEM case. Volatile-RAM is arguably a safer use case since it's possible to repair pages where the persistent case needs active application coordination" * tag 'devdax-for-5.1' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/nvdimm/nvdimm: device-dax: "Hotplug" persistent memory for use like normal RAM mm/resource: Let walk_system_ram_range() search child resources mm/memory-hotplug: Allow memory resources to be children mm/resource: Move HMM pr_debug() deeper into resource code mm/resource: Return real error codes from walk failures device-dax: Add a 'modalias' attribute to DAX 'bus' devices device-dax: Add a 'target_node' attribute device-dax: Auto-bind device after successful new_id acpi/nfit, device-dax: Identify differentiated memory with a unique numa-node device-dax: Add /sys/class/dax backwards compatibility device-dax: Add support for a dax override driver device-dax: Move resource pinning+mapping into the common driver device-dax: Introduce bus + driver model device-dax: Start defining a dax bus model device-dax: Remove multi-resource infrastructure device-dax: Kill dax_region base device-dax: Kill dax_region ida
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+What: /sys/class/dax/
+Date: May, 2016
+KernelVersion: v4.7
+Contact: linux-nvdimm@lists.01.org
+Description: Device DAX is the device-centric analogue of Filesystem
+ DAX (CONFIG_FS_DAX). It allows memory ranges to be
+ allocated and mapped without need of an intervening file
+ system. Device DAX is strict, precise and predictable.
+ Specifically this interface:
+
+ 1/ Guarantees fault granularity with respect to a given
+ page size (pte, pmd, or pud) set at configuration time.
+
+ 2/ Enforces deterministic behavior by being strict about
+ what fault scenarios are supported.
+
+ The /sys/class/dax/ interface enumerates all the
+ device-dax instances in the system. The ABI is
+ deprecated and will be removed after 2020. It is
+ replaced with the DAX bus interface /sys/bus/dax/ where
+ device-dax instances can be found under
+ /sys/bus/dax/devices/