Re: [PATCH] mm, hotplug: protect nr_zones with pgdat_resize_lock()

[Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com>]

On Tue 27-11-18 03:12:00, Wei Yang wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 26, 2018 at 09:16:08AM +0100, Michal Hocko wrote:
> >On Mon 26-11-18 10:28:40, Wei Yang wrote:
> >[...]
> >> But I get some difficulty to understand this TODO. You want to get rid of
> >> these lock? While these locks seem necessary to protect those data of
> >> pgdat/zone. Would you mind sharing more on this statement?
> >
> >Why do we need this lock to be irqsave? Is there any caller that uses
> >the lock from the IRQ context?
> 
> Went through the code, we have totally 9 place acquire
> pgdat_resize_lock:
> 
>    lib/show_mem.c:         1    show_mem()
>    mm/memory_hotplug.c:    4    online/offline_pages/__remove_zone()
>    mm/page_alloc.c:        2    defer_init
>    mm/sparse.c:            2    not necessary
> 
> Two places I am not sure:
> 
>    * show_mem() would be called from __alloc_pages_slowpath()

This shouldn't really need the lock. It is a mostly debugging aid rather
than something that cannot tolarate racing with hotplug. What is the
worst case that can happen?

>    * __remove_zone() is related to acpi_scan() on x86, may related to
>      other method on different arch

This one really needs a lock qwith a larger scope anyway.
-- 
Michal Hocko
SUSE Labs