Re: a patch drop request in -mm

From: Mel Gorman
Date: Thu Sep 24 2009 - 05:09:29 EST


On Thu, Sep 24, 2009 at 09:40:34AM +0900, KOSAKI Motohiro wrote:
> > On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 12:00:51AM +0900, KOSAKI Motohiro wrote:
> > > Mel,
> > >
> > > Today, my test found following patch makes false-positive warning.
> > > because, truncate can free the pages
> > > although the pages are mlock()ed.
> > >
> > > So, I think following patch should be dropped.
> > > .. or, do you think truncate should clear PG_mlock before free the page?
> >
> > Is there a reason that truncate cannot clear PG_mlock before freeing the
> > page?
>
> CC to Lee.
> IIRC, Lee tried it at first. but after some trouble, he decided change free_hot_cold_page().
> but unfortunately, I don't recall the reason ;-)
>
> Lee, Can you recall it?
>
>
> > > Can I ask your patch intention?
> >
> > Locked pages being freed to the page allocator were considered
> > unexpected and a counter was in place to determine how often that
> > situation occurred. However, I considered it unlikely that the counter
> > would be noticed so the warning was put in place to catch what class of
> > pages were getting freed locked inappropriately. I think a few anomolies
> > have been cleared up since. Ultimately, it should have been safe to
> > delete the check.
>
> OK. it seems reasonable. so, I only hope no see linus tree output false-positive warnings.
> Thus, I propse
>
> - don't merge this patch to linus tree
> - but, no drop from -mm
> it be holded in mm until this issue fixed.
> - I'll working on fixing this issue.
>
> I think this is enough fair.
>

I'm afraid I'm just about to run out the door and will be offline until
Tuesday at the very least. I haven't had the chance to review the patch.
However, I have no problem with this patch not being merged to Linus's tree
if it remains in -mm to catch this and other false positives.

> Hannes, I'm sorry. I haven't review your patch. I'm too busy now. please gime me more
> sevaral time.
>

It'll be Tuesday at the very earliest before I get a chance to review.

--
Mel Gorman
Part-time Phd Student Linux Technology Center
University of Limerick IBM Dublin Software Lab
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