From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from mail172.messagelabs.com (mail172.messagelabs.com [216.82.254.3]) by kanga.kvack.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C84378D0001 for ; Fri, 26 Nov 2010 10:01:12 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <20101126145410.435240588@chello.nl> Date: Fri, 26 Nov 2010 15:38:46 +0100 From: Peter Zijlstra Subject: [PATCH 03/21] mm: Improve page_lock_anon_vma() comment References: <20101126143843.801484792@chello.nl> Content-Disposition: inline; filename=mm-page_lock_anon_vma-comment.patch Sender: owner-linux-mm@kvack.org To: Andrea Arcangeli , Avi Kivity , Thomas Gleixner , Rik van Riel , Ingo Molnar , akpm@linux-foundation.org, Linus Torvalds Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-arch@vger.kernel.org, linux-mm@kvack.org, Benjamin Herrenschmidt , David Miller , Hugh Dickins , Mel Gorman , Nick Piggin , Peter Zijlstra , Paul McKenney , Yanmin Zhang , Stephen Rothwell List-ID: A slightly more verbose comment to go along with the trickery in page_lock_anon_vma(). Reviewed-by: KOSAKI Motohiro Acked-by: Mel Gorman Signed-off-by: Peter Zijlstra LKML-Reference: <1271158226.4807.1107.camel@twins> --- mm/rmap.c | 18 ++++++++++++++++-- 1 file changed, 16 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) Index: linux-2.6/mm/rmap.c =================================================================== --- linux-2.6.orig/mm/rmap.c +++ linux-2.6/mm/rmap.c @@ -311,8 +311,22 @@ void __init anon_vma_init(void) } /* - * Getting a lock on a stable anon_vma from a page off the LRU is - * tricky: page_lock_anon_vma rely on RCU to guard against the races. + * Getting a lock on a stable anon_vma from a page off the LRU is tricky! + * + * Since there is no serialization what so ever against page_remove_rmap() + * the best this function can do is return a locked anon_vma that might + * have been relevant to this page. + * + * The page might have been remapped to a different anon_vma or the anon_vma + * returned may already be freed (and even reused). + * + * All users of this function must be very careful when walking the anon_vma + * chain and verify that the page in question is indeed mapped in it + * [ something equivalent to page_mapped_in_vma() ]. + * + * Since anon_vma's slab is DESTROY_BY_RCU and we know from page_remove_rmap() + * that the anon_vma pointer from page->mapping is valid if there is a + * mapcount, we can dereference the anon_vma after observing those. */ struct anon_vma *page_lock_anon_vma(struct page *page) { -- To unsubscribe, send a message with 'unsubscribe linux-mm' in the body to majordomo@kvack.org. For more info on Linux MM, see: http://www.linux-mm.org/ . Fight unfair telecom policy in Canada: sign http://dissolvethecrtc.ca/ Don't email: email@kvack.org