Yes.
I tried to make us able to play with the page table entries without
holding the kernel lock, but it wasn't possible to do for 2.2.
Conceptually the mm semaphore _should_ serialize all accesses to the page
table, but making the page-out logic get the mm semaphore is just too
hard: I couldn't do it without some really obvious deadlock issues, and I
suspect it needs some serious designing to get right.
As a result, the rule really is: it's ok to _remove_ a page table entry
without holding the mm lock, but you have to hold the kernel lock to do
so. It's not a good rule, but it at least doesn't deadlock.
Linus
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