mmap how does kernel know a page is mmaped

[kernel neophyte]

On Thu, Jul 25, 2013 at 5:18 PM, <Valdis.Kletnieks at vt.edu> wrote:

> On Thu, 25 Jul 2013 16:57:44 -0700, kernel neophyte said:
>
> > I am sorry, its still not clear to me. All I am asking is  I want to know
> > and understand how mmap works, given an address *X*, how does the Linux
> > kernel figure out that *X* is an mmaped page?
>
> Before you ask *how* it does it, first figure out if it does it *at all*.
>
> The reason you can't figure out how the swami is levitating is because
> they aren't actually levitating at all.
>

:-) Good one!


> >                                               Is there a special flag in
> > the page table entry?
>
> No, because no flag is needed.
>
> >                        Does the access generate a page fault ?
>
> Maybe, maybe not.  If the page is resident in memory there's no page fault.
> And if it's not resident, it gets paged in from wherever the backing page
> happens to be.
>
> >                                                                 If so,
> how
> > does the handler find out it is an mmaped address?
>
> The handler doesn't *care* if it's mmaped.  All it has to know is (1) this
> page isn't in memory, (2) it needs to be in memory, and (3) so please
> schedule
> the I/O  to read it from block NNNN of device XXYY just like any *other*
> page being read in because of a page fault.
>
>
Thanks, I get it now.


> The *only* thing "magical" about an mmap'ed page is that the pointer to
> where
> to read/write it might (sometimes) point at someplace that's not a swap
> space.

Though for some uses of mmap(), it *does* point at swap space (for instance,
> the anonymous pages created by mmap() as used from malloc() in glibc).
>
> Thanks I get it now.

-Neo
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.kernelnewbies.org/pipermail/kernelnewbies/attachments/20130725/33c2d1d3/attachment-0001.html