While I was digging tmem and its source code, I found suspicious things about frontswap and cleancache.
When the guest OS wants to evict either a dirty or clean page, frontswap and cleancache will store it in tmem.
The linux kernel document tells that
[Documentation/vm/frontswap.txt]
A “store” will copy the page to transcendent memory ….
A “load” will copy the page, if found, from transcendent memory into kernel memory ...
[Documentation/vm/cleancache.txt]
A “put_page” will copy a page (presumably about-to-be-evicted) page into cleancache ...
A “get_page” will copy the page, if found, from cleancache into kernel memory ...
My colleagues and I think copying the page is not necessary (especially for cleancache) because both kernel memory and tmem have same data. Why don’t we just change the pointer to the page and let it belong to tmem? We were wondering if there is any specific reason not to copy the pages to tmem.
Thanks.
