Re: [PATCH v2] page_alloc: Fix freeing non-compound pages

[Mike Rapoport]

On Tue, Sep 29, 2020 at 04:40:26AM +0100, Matthew Wilcox wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 28, 2020 at 06:03:07PM -0700, Andrew Morton wrote:
> > Well that's weird and scary looking.  `page' has non-zero refcount yet
> > we go and free random followon pages.  Methinks it merits an
> > explanatory comment?
> 
> Here's some kernel-doc.  Opinions?
> 
> /**
>  * __free_pages - Free pages allocated with alloc_pages().
>  * @page: The page pointer returned from alloc_pages().
>  * @order: The order of the allocation.
>  *
>  * This function differs from put_page() in that it can free multi-page

This sentence presumes existing description/prior knowledge about
put_page().

Maybe

  This function can free multi-page allocations that were not allocated
  with %__GFP_COMP, unlike put_page() that would free only the first page
  in such case. __free_pages() does not ...

>  * allocations that were not allocated with %__GFP_COMP.  This function
>  * does not check that the @order passed in matches that of the
>  * allocation, so it is possible to leak memory.  Freeing more memory than
>  * was allocated will probably be warned about by other debugging checks.
>  *
>  * It is only safe to use the page reference count to determine when
>  * to free an allocation if you use %__GFP_COMP (in which case, you may
>  * as well use put_page() to free the page).  Another thread may have a
>  * speculative reference to the first page, but it has no way of knowing
>  * about the rest of the allocation, so we have to free all but the
>  * first page here.
>  *
>  * Context: May be called in interrupt context but not NMI context.
>  */
> 

-- 
Sincerely yours,
Mike.