Re: [PATCH V2 2/2] powerpc/thp: Serialize pmd clear against a linux page table walk.

From: Andrew Morton
Date: Fri May 08 2015 - 18:21:57 EST


On Thu, 7 May 2015 12:53:28 +0530 "Aneesh Kumar K.V" <aneesh.kumar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Serialize against find_linux_pte_or_hugepte which does lock-less
> lookup in page tables with local interrupts disabled. For huge pages
> it casts pmd_t to pte_t. Since format of pte_t is different from
> pmd_t we want to prevent transit from pmd pointing to page table
> to pmd pointing to huge page (and back) while interrupts are disabled.
> We clear pmd to possibly replace it with page table pointer in
> different code paths. So make sure we wait for the parallel
> find_linux_pte_or_hugepage to finish.

I'm not seeing here any description of the problem which is being
fixed. Does the patch make the machine faster? Does the machine
crash?
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/