Re: When should ralloc.c be used?

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Cc: address@hidden, address@hidden, address@hidden
> From: Daniel Colascione <address@hidden>
> Date: Fri, 28 Oct 2016 01:11:08 -0700
> 
> Say I mmap (anonymously, for simplicity) a page PROT_NONE. After the 
> initial mapping, that address space is unavailable for other uses. But 
> because the page protections are PROT_NONE, my program has no legal 
> right to access that page, so the OS doesn't have to guarantee that it 
> can find a physical page to back that page I've mmaped. In this state, 
> the memory is reserved.
> 
> The 20GB PROT_NONE address space reservation itself requires very little 
> memory. It's just a note in the kernel's VM interval tree that says "the 
> addresses in range [0x20000, 0x500020000) are reserved". Virtual memory is
> 
> Now imagine I change the protections to PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE --- once 
> the PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE mprotect succeeds, my program has every right 
> to access that page; under a strict accounting scheme (that is, without 
> overcommit), the OS has to guarantee that it'll be able to go find a 
> physical page to back that virtual page. In this state, the memory is 
> committed -- the kernel has committed to finding backing storage for 
> that page at some point when the current process tries to access it.

I'm with you up to here.  My question is whether PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE
call could fail after PROT_NONE succeeded.  You seem to say it could;
I thought it couldn't.

> Say you have a strict-accounting system with 1GB of RAM and 1GB of swap. 
> I can write a program that reserves 20GB of address space.

I thought such a reservation should fail, because you don't have
enough virtual memory for 20GB of addresses.  IOW, I thought the
ability to reserve address space is restricted by the actual amount of
virtual memory available on the system at the time of the call.  You
seem to say I was wrong.