Re: [PATCH v7 3/8] mm/rmap: Split try_to_munlock from try_to_unmap

[Alistair Popple]

On Wednesday, 31 March 2021 2:56:38 PM AEDT John Hubbard wrote:
> On 3/30/21 3:56 PM, Alistair Popple wrote:
> ...
> >> +1 for renaming "munlock*" items to "mlock*", where applicable. good 
grief.
> > 
> > At least the situation was weird enough to prompt further investigation :)
> > 
> > Renaming to mlock* doesn't feel like the right solution to me either 
though. I
> > am not sure if you saw me responding to myself earlier but I am thinking
> > renaming try_to_munlock() -> page_mlocked() and try_to_munlock_one() ->
> > page_mlock_one() might be better. Thoughts?
> > 
> 
> Quite confused by this naming idea. Because: try_to_munlock() returns
> void, so a boolean-style name such as "page_mlocked()" is already not a
> good fit.
> 
> Even more important, though, is that try_to_munlock() is mlock-ing the
> page, right? Is there some subtle point I'm missing? It really is doing
> an mlock to the best of my knowledge here. Although the kerneldoc
> comment for try_to_munlock() seems questionable too:

It's mlocking the page if it turns out it still needs to be locked after 
unlocking it. But I don't think you're missing anything.

> /**
>   * try_to_munlock - try to munlock a page
>   * @page: the page to be munlocked
>   *
>   * Called from munlock code.  Checks all of the VMAs mapping the page
>   * to make sure nobody else has this page mlocked. The page will be
>   * returned with PG_mlocked cleared if no other vmas have it mlocked.
>   */
> 
> ...because I don't see where, in *this* routine, it clears PG_mlocked!
>
> Obviously we agree that a routine should be named based on what it does,
> rather than on who calls it. So I think that still leads to:
> 
>       try_to_munlock() --> try_to_mlock()
>       try_to_munlock_one() --> try_to_mlock_one()
> 
> Sorry if I'm missing something really obvious.

Nope, I confused things somewhat by blindly quoting the documentation whilst 
forgetting that try_to_munlock() returns void rather than a bool.

> > This is actually inspired from a suggestion in Documentation/vm/
unevictable-
> > lru.rst which warns about this problem:
> > 
> > try_to_munlock() Reverse Map Scan
> > ---------------------------------
> > 
> > .. warning::
> >     [!] TODO/FIXME: a better name might be page_mlocked() - analogous to 
the
> >     page_referenced() reverse map walker.
> > 
> 
> This is actually rather bad advice! page_referenced() returns an
> int-that-is-really-a-boolean, whereas try_to_munlock(), at least as it
> stands now, returns void. Usually when I'm writing a TODO item, I'm in a
> hurry, and I think that's what probably happened here, too. :)

So I think we're in agreement. The naming is bad and the advice in the 
documentation is also questionable :-)

Thanks for the thoughts, I will re-send this with naming and documentation 
updates.

> >> Although, it seems reasonable to tack such renaming patches onto the tail
> > end
> >> of this series. But whatever works.
> > 
> > Unless anyone objects strongly I will roll the rename into this patch as 
there
> > is only one caller of try_to_munlock.
> > 
> >   - Alistair
> > 
> 
> No objections here. :)
> 
> thanks,
>