Re: [PATCH] ppc64: Fix possible race with set_pte on a present PTE

[Benjamin Herrenschmidt <benh@kernel.crashing.org>]

On Tue, 2004-05-25 at 14:37, Andrea Arcangeli wrote:
> On Tue, May 25, 2004 at 02:17:41PM +1000, Benjamin Herrenschmidt wrote:
> > on a present PTE (thus letting set_pte be non-atomic) and we can safely
> > BUG_ON(pte_present(*ptep)) in it, right ?
> 
> set_pte is used even to mark the pte non present, so you can forget
> about using BUG_ON(pte_present(*ptep)) anywhere in set_pte regardless of
> how we fix this race (see mm/objrmap.c:unmap_pte_page()). If you want to
> trap for it you should add a set_pte_present and use it at least in
> objrmap.c during the paging.

Isn't this the work of pte_clear ? It's quite important to be very
careful about such PTE manipulations on ppc & ppc64 or we can wreck
everything by losting the hash state bits in there.

> unless you are generating page faults if the young bit is clear, this
> will only slowdown compared to my simpler approch.
> 
> However if some arch is using page faults to set the young bit in
> hardware (not in software), then slowing micro-down x86 and others might
> be an option to share all the common code, but we could easily avoid
> smp locking in x86 and alpha by threating the young-bit-page-fault archs
> differently too. 
> 
> Would be nice to hear from the ia64 folks what they're doing w.r.t. to
> the young bit, I think ia64 is the only one providing the young bit with
> an hardware page fault.
-- 
Benjamin Herrenschmidt <benh@kernel.crashing.org>

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