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If a dax buffer from a device that does not map pages is passed to read(2) or write(2) as a target for direct-I/O it triggers SIGBUS. If gdb attempts to examine the contents of a dax buffer from a device that does not map pages it triggers SIGBUS. If fork(2) is called on a process with a dax mapping from a device that does not map pages it triggers SIGBUS. 'struct page' is required otherwise several kernel code paths break in surprising ways. Disable filesystem-dax on devices that do not map pages. In addition to needing pfn_to_page() to be valid we also require devmap pages. We need this to detect dax pages in the get_user_pages_fast() path and so that we can stop managing the VM_MIXEDMAP flag. For DAX drivers that have not supported get_user_pages() to date we allow them to opt-in to supporting DAX with the CONFIG_FS_DAX_LIMITED configuration option which requires ->direct_access() to return pfn_t_special() pfns. This leaves DAX support in brd disabled and scheduled for removal. Note that when the initial dax support was being merged a few years back there was concern that struct page was unsuitable for use with next generation persistent memory devices. The theoretical concern was that struct page access, being such a hotly used data structure in the kernel, would lead to media wear out. While that was a reasonable conservative starting position it has not held true in practice. We have long since committed to using devm_memremap_pages() to support higher order kernel functionality that needs get_user_pages() and pfn_to_page(). Cc: Jeff Moyer <jmoyer@redhat.com> Cc: Ross Zwisler <ross.zwisler@linux.intel.com> Cc: Benjamin Herrenschmidt <benh@kernel.crashing.org> Cc: Paul Mackerras <paulus@samba.org> Cc: Michael Ellerman <mpe@ellerman.id.au> Cc: Martin Schwidefsky <schwidefsky@de.ibm.com> Cc: Heiko Carstens <heiko.carstens@de.ibm.com> Reviewed-by: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz> Reviewed-by: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de> Reviewed-by: Gerald Schaefer <gerald.schaefer@de.ibm.com> Signed-off-by: Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@intel.com>
Linux kernel ============ This file was moved to Documentation/admin-guide/README.rst Please notice that there are several guides for kernel developers and users. These guides can be rendered in a number of formats, like HTML and PDF. In order to build the documentation, use ``make htmldocs`` or ``make pdfdocs``. There are various text files in the Documentation/ subdirectory, several of them using the Restructured Text markup notation. See Documentation/00-INDEX for a list of what is contained in each file. Please read the Documentation/process/changes.rst file, as it contains the requirements for building and running the kernel, and information about the problems which may result by upgrading your kernel.