In Linux, physical memory pages belong to the kernel data segment are swappable or not?

Question

I'm asking because I remember that all physical pages belong to the kernel are pinned in memory and thus are unswappable, like what is said here: http://www.cse.psu.edu/~axs53/spring01/linux/memory.ppt

However, I'm reading a research paper and feel confused as it says, "(physical) pages frequently move between the kernel data segment and user space."

It also mentions that, in contrast, physical pages do not move between the kernel code segment and user space.

I think if a physical page sometimes belongs to the kernel data segment and sometimes belongs to user space, it must mean that physical pages belong to the kernel data segment are swappable, which is against my current understanding.

So, physical pages belong to the kernel data segment are swappable? unswappable?

P.S. The research paper is available here: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~arvinds/pubs/secvisor.pdf

Please search "move between" and you will find it.

P.S. again, a virtual memory area ranging from [3G + 896M] to 4G belongs to the kernel and is used for mapping physical pages in ZONE_HIGHMEM (x86 32-bit Linux, 3G + 1G setting). In such a case, the kernel may first map some virtual pages in the area to the physical pages that host the current process's page table, modify some page table entries, and unmap the virtual pages. This way, the physical pages may sometimes belong to the kernel and sometimes belong to user space, because they do not belong to the kernel after the unmapping and thus become swappable. Is this the reason?

Answer 1

tl;dr - the memory pools and swapping are different concepts. You can not make any deductions from one about the other.

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kmalloc() and other kernel data allocation come from slab/slub, etc. The same place that the kernel gets data for user-space. Ergo pages frequently move between the kernel data segment and user space. This is correct. It doesn't say anything about swapping. That is a separate issue and you can not deduce anything.

The kernel code is typically populated at boot and marked read-only and never changes after that. Ergo physical pages do not move between the kernel code segment and user space.

Why do you think because something comes from the same pool, it is the same? The network sockets also come from the same memory pool. It is a seperation of concern. The linux-mm (memory management system) handles swap. A page can be pinned (unswappable). The check for static kernel memory (this may include .bss and .data) is a simple range check. The memory is normally pinned and marked unswappable at the linux-mm layer. The user data (whos allocation come from the same pool) can be marked as swappable by the linux-mm. For instance, even without swap, user-space text is still swappable because it is backed by an inode. Caching is much simpler for read-only data. If data is swapped, it is marked as such in the MMU tables and a fault handler must distinguish between swap and a SIGBUS; which is part of the linux-mm.

There are also versions of Linux with no-mm (or no MMU) and these will never swap anything. In theory someone might be able to swap kernel data; but the why is it in the kernel? The Linux way would be to use a module and only load them as needed. Certainly, the linux-mm data is kernel data and hopefully, you can see a problem with swapping that.

The problem with conceptual questions like this,

1. It can differ with Linux versions.
2. It can differ with Linux configurations.
3. The advice can change as Linux evolves.

For certain, the linux-mm code can not be swappable, nor any interrupt handler. It is possible that at some point in time, kernel code and/or data could be swapped. I don't think that this is ever the current case outside of module loading/unloading (and it is rather pedantic/esoteric as to whether you call this swapping or not).

Answer 2

I think if a physical page sometimes belongs to the kernel data segment and sometimes belongs to user space, it must mean that physical pages belong to the kernel data segment are swappable, which is against my current understanding.

there is no connection between swappable memory and page movement between user space and kernel space. whether a page can be swapped or not depends totally on whether it is pinned or not. Pinned pages are not swapped so their mapping is considered permanent.

So, physical pages belong to the kernel data segment are swappable? unswappable?

usually pages used by kernel are pinned and so are meant not to be swappable.