mm: introduce pte_special pte bit
s390 for one, cannot implement VM_MIXEDMAP with pfn_valid, due to their memory
model (which is more dynamic than most). Instead, they had proposed to
implement it with an additional path through vm_normal_page(), using a bit in
the pte to determine whether or not the page should be refcounted:
vm_normal_page()
{
...
if (unlikely(vma->vm_flags & (VM_PFNMAP|VM_MIXEDMAP))) {
if (vma->vm_flags & VM_MIXEDMAP) {
#ifdef s390
if (!mixedmap_refcount_pte(pte))
return NULL;
#else
if (!pfn_valid(pfn))
return NULL;
#endif
goto out;
}
...
}
This is fine, however if we are allowed to use a bit in the pte to determine
refcountedness, we can use that to _completely_ replace all the vma based
schemes. So instead of adding more cases to the already complex vma-based
scheme, we can have a clearly seperate and simple pte-based scheme (and get
slightly better cod...
parent
b379d790
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