tree 47bb0acc9fc3e783ad9cf33097a6636190f5e42b
parent 2b0a9f017548f05e42fbf7e67c4a626c1ebd5e12
author Pavel Emelyanov <xemul@parallels.com> 1372888880 -0700
committer Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> 1372892846 -0700

mm: soft-dirty bits for user memory changes tracking

The soft-dirty is a bit on a PTE which helps to track which pages a task
writes to.  In order to do this tracking one should

  1. Clear soft-dirty bits from PTEs ("echo 4 > /proc/PID/clear_refs)
  2. Wait some time.
  3. Read soft-dirty bits (55'th in /proc/PID/pagemap2 entries)

To do this tracking, the writable bit is cleared from PTEs when the
soft-dirty bit is.  Thus, after this, when the task tries to modify a
page at some virtual address the #PF occurs and the kernel sets the
soft-dirty bit on the respective PTE.

Note, that although all the task's address space is marked as r/o after
the soft-dirty bits clear, the #PF-s that occur after that are processed
fast.  This is so, since the pages are still mapped to physical memory,
and thus all the kernel does is finds this fact out and puts back
writable, dirty and soft-dirty bits on the PTE.

Another thing to note, is that when mremap moves PTEs they are marked
with soft-dirty as well, since from the user perspective mremap modifies
the virtual memory at mremap's new address.

Signed-off-by: Pavel Emelyanov <xemul@parallels.com>
Cc: Matt Mackall <mpm@selenic.com>
Cc: Xiao Guangrong <xiaoguangrong@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Cc: Glauber Costa <glommer@parallels.com>
Cc: Marcelo Tosatti <mtosatti@redhat.com>
Cc: KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@gmail.com>
Cc: Stephen Rothwell <sfr@canb.auug.org.au>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>