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\#hurd, freenode, 2010
<slpz> humm... why does tmpfs try to use the default pager? that's a bad idea, and probably will never work correctly...
* slpz is thinking about old issues
<slpz> tmpfs should create its own pagers, just like ext2fs, storeio...
<slpz> slopez@slp-hurd:~$ settrans -a tmp /hurd/tmpfs 10M
<slpz> slopez@slp-hurd:~$ echo "foo" > tmp/bar
<slpz> slopez@slp-hurd:~$ cat tmp/bar
<slpz> foo
<slpz> slopez@slp-hurd:~$
<slpz> :-)
<pochu> slpz: woo you fixed it?
<slpz> pochu: well, it's WIP, but reading/writing works...
<slpz> I've replaced the use of default pager for the standard pager creation mechanism
<antrik> slpz: err... how is it supposed to use swap space if not using the default pager?
<antrik> slpz: or do you mean that it should act as a proxy, just allocating anonymous memory (backed by the default pager) itself?
<youpi> antrik: the kernel uses the default pager if the application pager isn't responsive enough
<slpz> antrik: it will just create memory objects and provide zerofilled pages when requested by the kernel (after a page fault)
<antrik> youpi: that makes sense I guess... but how is that relevant to the question at hand?...
<slpz> antrik: memory objects will contain the data by themselves
<slpz> antrik: as youpi said, when memory is scarce, GNU Mach will start paging out data from memory objects to the default pager
<slpz> antrik: that's the way in which pages will get into swap space
<slpz> (if needed)
<youpi> the thing being that the tmpfs pager has a chance to select pages he doesn't care any more about
<antrik> slpz: well, the point is that instead of writing the pages to a backing store, tmpfs will just keep them in anonymous memory, and let the default pager write them out when there is pressure, right?
<antrik> youpi: no idea what you are talking about. apparently I still don't really understand this stuff :-(
<youpi> ah, but tmpfs doesn't have pages he doesn't care about, does it?
<slpz> antrik: yes, but the term "anonymous memory" could be a bit confusing.
<slpz> antrik: in GNU Mach, anonymous memory is backed by a memory object without a pager. In tmpfs, nodes will be allocated in memory objects, and the pager for those memory objects will be tmpfs itself
<antrik> slpz: hm... I thought anynymous memory is backed by memory objects created from the default pager?
<antrik> yes, I understand that tmpfs is supposed to be the pager for the objects it provides. they are obviously not anonymoust -- they have inodes in the tmpfs name space
<antrik> but my understanding so far was that when Mach returns pages to the pager, they end up in anonymous memory allocated to the pager process; and then this pager is responsible for writing them back to the actual backing store
<antrik> am I totally off there?...
<antrik> (i.e. in my understanding the returned pages do not reside in the actual memory object the pager provides, but in an anonymous memory object)
<slpz> antrik: you're right. The trick here is, when does Mach return the pages?
<slpz> antrik: if we set the attribute "can_persist" in a memory object, Mach will keep it until object cache is full or memory is scarce
<slpz> or we change the attributes so it can no longer persist, of course
<slpz> without a backing store, if Mach starts sending us pages to be written, we're in trouble
<slpz> so we must do something about it. One option, could be creating another pager and copying the contents between objects.
<antrik> another pager? not sure what you mean
<antrik> BTW, you didn't really say why we can't use the default pager for tmpfs objects :-)
<slpz> well, there're two problems when using the default pager as backing store for translators
<slpz> 1) Mach relies on it to do swapping tasks, so meddling with it is not a good idea
<slpz> 2) There're problems with seqnos when trying to work with the default pager from tasks other the kernel itself
<slpz> (probably, the latter could be fixed)
<slpz> antrik: pager's terminology is a bit confusing. One can also say creating another memory object (though the function in libpager is "pager_create")
<antrik> not sure why "meddling" with it would be a problem...
<antrik> and yeah, I was vaguely aware that there is some seqno problem with tmpfs... though so far I didn't really understand what it was about :-)
<antrik> makes sense now
<antrik> anyways, AIUI now you are trying to come up with a mechanism where the default pager is not used for tmpfs objects directly, but without making it inefficient?
<antrik> slpz: still don't understand what you mean by creating another memory object/pager...
<antrik> (and yeat, the terminology is pretty mixed up even in Mach itself)
<slpz> antrik: I meant creating another pager, in terms of calling again to libpager's pager_create
<antrik> slpz: well, I understand what "create another pager" means... I just don't understand what this other pager would be, when you would create it, and what for...
<slpz> antrik: oh, ok, sorry
<slpz> antrik: creating another pager it's just a trick to avoid losing information when Mach's objects cache is full, and it decides to purge one of our objects
<slpz> anyway, IMHO object caching mechanism is obsolete and should be replaced
<slpz> I'm writting a comment to bug #28730 which says something about this
<slpz> antrik: just one more thing :-)
<slpz> if you look at the code, for most time of their lives, anonymous memory objects don't have a pager
<slpz> not even the default one
<slpz> only the pageout thread, when the system is running really low on memory, gives them a reference to the default pager by calling vm_object_pager_create
<slpz> this is not really important, but worth noting ;-)
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