From 6111e4ca6829a0e8b092b8e5eeb6b5366091f29c Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Peter Zijlstra Date: Tue, 24 May 2011 17:12:08 -0700 Subject: 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 Reviewed-by: KOSAKI Motohiro Reviewed-by: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki Acked-by: Mel Gorman Acked-by: Hugh Dickins Cc: Benjamin Herrenschmidt Cc: David Miller Cc: Martin Schwidefsky Cc: Russell King Cc: Paul Mundt Cc: Jeff Dike Cc: Richard Weinberger Cc: Tony Luck Cc: Nick Piggin Cc: Namhyung Kim Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds --- mm/rmap.c | 18 ++++++++++++++++-- 1 file changed, 16 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) (limited to 'mm') diff --git a/mm/rmap.c b/mm/rmap.c index c6044761617..cc140811af5 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) { -- cgit v1.2.3-18-g5258