On Thu, Jan 09, 2014 at 03:04:47PM +0100, Oleg Nesterov wrote: > > > #ifdef CONFIG_TRANSPARENT_HUGEPAGE > > page_head = page; > > if (unlikely(PageTail(page))) { > > put_page(page); > > > > > > so I'm still not seeing how a tail page racing with a split ends up with > > mayhem. > > But get/put(page_tail) plays with page_head which can be freed/reallocated, > it does compound_lock(page_head). > > > I could also still be stuck in a "la la la, everything is fine" mode. > > More likely it is me who tries to deny the fact I missed something ;) >
My hangup was that this was related to futex and I was focusing it as a specific example that made the patch necessary. However, this is a therotical case that potentially impacts a put_page if it mistakenly believes it is still a tail page when it's not due a a parallel split. I see and understand that race and while I think the patch is overkill, I have no problem with including it at the start of a series that reexamines the locking in that area. It makes for a suitable -stable backport and I hope/expect the reworked locking would then remove the barrier again for upstream. I haven't looked at the reworked locking but understand there is a v3 on the way so I'll wait until that happens and work my way through it. Thanks and sorry for the noise. -- Mel Gorman SUSE Labs -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majord...@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/