Re: [PATCH v8, part3 10/14] mm: use a dedicated lock to protecttotalram_pages and zone->managed_pages

From: Andrew Morton
Date: Tue Jun 11 2013 - 16:00:50 EST


On Sun, 26 May 2013 21:38:38 +0800 Jiang Liu <liuj97@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Currently lock_memory_hotplug()/unlock_memory_hotplug() are used to
> protect totalram_pages and zone->managed_pages. Other than the memory
> hotplug driver, totalram_pages and zone->managed_pages may also be
> modified at runtime by other drivers, such as Xen balloon,
> virtio_balloon etc. For those cases, memory hotplug lock is a little
> too heavy, so introduce a dedicated lock to protect totalram_pages
> and zone->managed_pages.
>
> Now we have a simplified locking rules totalram_pages and
> zone->managed_pages as:
> 1) no locking for read accesses because they are unsigned long.
> 2) no locking for write accesses at boot time in single-threaded context.
> 3) serialize write accesses at runtime by acquiring the dedicated
> managed_page_count_lock.
>
> Also adjust zone->managed_pages when freeing reserved pages into the
> buddy system, to keep totalram_pages and zone->managed_pages in
> consistence.
>
> ...
>
> +void adjust_managed_page_count(struct page *page, long count)
> +{
> + spin_lock(&managed_page_count_lock);
> + page_zone(page)->managed_pages += count;
> + totalram_pages += count;
> + spin_unlock(&managed_page_count_lock);
> +}
> +EXPORT_SYMBOL(adjust_managed_page_count);

This is exported to modules but there are no modular callers at this
time.

I assume this was done for some forthcoming xen/virtio_balloon/etc
patches? If so, it would be better to avoid adding the export until it
is actually needed.



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