Re: [PATCH v7 2/4] virtio_balloon: introduce migration primitives toballoon pages

From: Michael S. Tsirkin
Date: Wed Aug 15 2012 - 05:24:34 EST


On Wed, Aug 15, 2012 at 10:05:28AM +0100, Mel Gorman wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 14, 2012 at 05:11:13PM -0300, Rafael Aquini wrote:
> > On Tue, Aug 14, 2012 at 10:51:39PM +0300, Michael S. Tsirkin wrote:
> > > What I think you should do is use rcu for access.
> > > And here sync rcu before freeing.
> > > Maybe an overkill but at least a documented synchronization
> > > primitive, and it is very light weight.
> > >
> >
> > I liked your suggestion on barriers, as well.
> >
>
> I have not thought about this as deeply as I shouold but is simply rechecking
> the mapping under the pages_lock to make sure the page is still a balloon
> page an option? i.e. use pages_lock to stabilise page->mapping.

To clarify, are you concerned about cost of rcu_read_lock
for non balloon pages?

> --
> Mel Gorman
> SUSE Labs
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