Re: [Patch v2] mm: thp: grab the lock before manipulation defer list

[Kirill A. Shutemov]

On Tue, Jan 14, 2020 at 10:31:22AM +0100, Michal Hocko wrote:
> On Sat 11-01-20 03:03:52, Kirill A. Shutemov wrote:
> > On Thu, Jan 09, 2020 at 10:30:54PM +0800, Wei Yang wrote:
> > > As all the other places, we grab the lock before manipulate the defer list.
> > > Current implementation may face a race condition.
> > > 
> > > For example, the potential race would be:
> > > 
> > >     CPU1                      CPU2
> > >     mem_cgroup_move_account   split_huge_page_to_list
> > >       !list_empty
> > >                                 lock
> > >                                 !list_empty
> > >                                 list_del
> > >                                 unlock
> > >       lock
> > >       # !list_empty might not hold anymore
> > >       list_del_init
> > >       unlock
> > 
> > I don't think this particular race is possible. Both parties take page
> > lock before messing with deferred queue, but anytway:
> > 
> > Acked-by: Kirill A. Shutemov <kirill.shutemov@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> 
> I am confused, if the above race is not possible then what would be a
> real race? We really do not want to have a patch with a misleading
> changelog, do we?

The alternative is to make sure that all page_deferred_list() called with
page lock taken.

I'll look into it.

-- 
 Kirill A. Shutemov