mmap how does kernel know a page is mmaped

[Valdis.Kletnieks at vt.edu]

On Thu, 25 Jul 2013 09:14:03 -0700, kernel neophyte said:

> Could anyone please explain, how mmap works underneath ? when kernel
> traveses pgd->pud->pmd->pte how does it know that a particular page is a
> mmaped page ? is there any special flag ?

Why would the address mapping hardware even *care* that it's an mmap'ed
page, once the mapping is set up?  For that matter, why would most of
the kernel code care?

Only time an mmap'ed page is any different than any other process page is
while the mmap is actually being set up, modified, or torn down.

(And in fact, that's part of why getting the varions sync() calls to play
nice with mmap() is so hard - because an mmap'ed file page is just a page.
So noticing that a page got modified and knowing to do stuff like update
the atime and mtime of the backing file is difficult...)

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 865 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.kernelnewbies.org/pipermail/kernelnewbies/attachments/20130725/f12ac9d2/attachment.bin