From: Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@chello.nl>
Date: Wed, 25 May 2011 00:12:08 +0000 (-0700)
Subject: mm: improve page_lock_anon_vma() comment
X-Git-Tag: MMI-PSA29.97-13-9~19574
X-Git-Url: https://git.stricted.de/?a=commitdiff_plain;h=6111e4ca6829a0e8b092b8e5eeb6b5366091f29c;p=GitHub%2FMotorolaMobilityLLC%2Fkernel-slsi.git

mm: improve page_lock_anon_vma() comment

A slightly more verbose comment to go along with the trickery in
page_lock_anon_vma().

Signed-off-by: Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@chello.nl>
Reviewed-by: KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@jp.fujitsu.com>
Reviewed-by: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com>
Acked-by: Mel Gorman <mel@csn.ul.ie>
Acked-by: Hugh Dickins <hughd@google.com>
Cc: Benjamin Herrenschmidt <benh@kernel.crashing.org>
Cc: David Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
Cc: Martin Schwidefsky <schwidefsky@de.ibm.com>
Cc: Russell King <rmk@arm.linux.org.uk>
Cc: Paul Mundt <lethal@linux-sh.org>
Cc: Jeff Dike <jdike@addtoit.com>
Cc: Richard Weinberger <richard@nod.at>
Cc: Tony Luck <tony.luck@intel.com>
Cc: Nick Piggin <npiggin@kernel.dk>
Cc: Namhyung Kim <namhyung@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
---

diff --git a/mm/rmap.c b/mm/rmap.c
index c6044761617e..cc140811af56 100644
--- a/mm/rmap.c
+++ b/mm/rmap.c
@@ -320,8 +320,22 @@ void __init anon_vma_init(void)
 }
 
 /*
- * Getting a lock on a stable anon_vma from a page off the LRU is
- * tricky: page_lock_anon_vma rely on RCU to guard against the races.
+ * Getting a lock on a stable anon_vma from a page off the LRU is tricky!
+ *
+ * Since there is no serialization what so ever against page_remove_rmap()
+ * the best this function can do is return a locked anon_vma that might
+ * have been relevant to this page.
+ *
+ * The page might have been remapped to a different anon_vma or the anon_vma
+ * returned may already be freed (and even reused).
+ *
+ * All users of this function must be very careful when walking the anon_vma
+ * chain and verify that the page in question is indeed mapped in it
+ * [ something equivalent to page_mapped_in_vma() ].
+ *
+ * Since anon_vma's slab is DESTROY_BY_RCU and we know from page_remove_rmap()
+ * that the anon_vma pointer from page->mapping is valid if there is a
+ * mapcount, we can dereference the anon_vma after observing those.
  */
 struct anon_vma *page_lock_anon_vma(struct page *page)
 {