Re: [RFC][PATCH] mm: Split page_has_private() in two to better handle PG_private_2

[Linus Torvalds]

On Thu, Apr 8, 2021 at 2:15 PM David Howells <dhowells@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> mm: Split page_has_private() in two to better handle PG_private_2

>From a look through the patch and some (limited) thinking about it, I
like the patch. I think it clarifies the two very different cases, and
makes it clear that one is about that page cleanup, and the other is
about the magical reference counting. The two are separate issues,
even if for PG_private both happen to be true.

So this seems sane to me.

That said, I had a couple of reactions:

> diff --git a/include/linux/page-flags.h b/include/linux/page-flags.h
> index 04a34c08e0a6..04cb440ce06e 100644
> --- a/include/linux/page-flags.h
> +++ b/include/linux/page-flags.h
> @@ -832,14 +832,27 @@ static inline void ClearPageSlabPfmemalloc(struct page *page)
>
>  #define PAGE_FLAGS_PRIVATE                             \
>         (1UL << PG_private | 1UL << PG_private_2)

I think this should be re-named to be PAGE_FLAGS_CLEANUP, because I
don't think it makes any other sense to "combine" the two PG_private*
bits any more. No?

> +static inline int page_private_count(struct page *page)
> +{
> +       return test_bit(PG_private, &page->flags) ? 1 : 0;
> +}

Why is this open-coding the bit test, rather than just doing

        return PagePrivate(page) ? 1 : 0;

instead? In fact, since test_bit() _should_ return a 'bool', I think even just

        return PagePrivate(page);

should work and give the same result, but I could imagine that some
architecture version of "test_bit()" might return some other non-zero
value (although honestly, I think that should be fixed if so).

                Linus