Re: [PATCH 20/20] mm: Optimize page_lock_anon_vma() fast-path

[Peter Zijlstra]

On Wed, 2011-04-20 at 14:38 +0200, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> > > +   if (!page_mapped(page)) {
> > > +           put_anon_vma(anon_vma);
> > > +           anon_vma = NULL;
> > > +           goto out;
> > > +   }
> > 
> > Also quite opaque, needs decent commentary.
> > 
> > I'd have expected this test to occur after the lock was acquired.
> 
> Right, so I think we could drop that test from both here and
> page_get_anon_vma() and nothing would break, its simply avoiding some
> work in case we do detect the race with page_remove_rmap().
> 
> So yes, I think I'll move it down because that'll widen the scope of
> this optimization. 

OK, so I went trawling through the linux-mm logs and actually found why
this is needed under rcu_read_lock(), sadly I cannot seem to find a web
reference to 2006 linux-mm emails.

It was Hugh who noted that page_remove_rmap() only decrements
page->_mapcount but does not clear page->mapping, therefore we must test
page_mapped() after reading page->mapping while under the
rcu_read_lock() in order to determine if the pointer obtained is still
valid.

The comment that exists today in __page_lock_anon_vma() actually tries
to explain this


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