From: Steven Rostedt Running the annotated branch profiler on a box doing average work (firefox, evolution, xchat, distcc farm), the likely() used in grab_cache_page_write_begin() was incorrect most of the time: correct incorrect % Function File Line ------- --------- - -------- ---- ---- 1924262 71332401 97 grab_cache_page_write_begin filemap.c 2206 Adding a trace_printk() and running the function tracer limited to just this function I can see: gconfd-2-2696 [000] 4467.268935: grab_cache_page_write_begin: page= (null) mapping=ffff8800676a9460 index=7 gconfd-2-2696 [000] 4467.268946: grab_cache_page_write_begin <-ext3_write_begin gconfd-2-2696 [000] 4467.268947: grab_cache_page_write_begin: page= (null) mapping=ffff8800676a9460 index=8 gconfd-2-2696 [000] 4467.268959: grab_cache_page_write_begin <-ext3_write_begin gconfd-2-2696 [000] 4467.268960: grab_cache_page_write_begin: page= (null) mapping=ffff8800676a9460 index=9 gconfd-2-2696 [000] 4467.268972: grab_cache_page_write_begin <-ext3_write_begin gconfd-2-2696 [000] 4467.268973: grab_cache_page_write_begin: page= (null) mapping=ffff8800676a9460 index=10 gconfd-2-2696 [000] 4467.268991: grab_cache_page_write_begin <-ext3_write_begin gconfd-2-2696 [000] 4467.268992: grab_cache_page_write_begin: page= (null) mapping=ffff8800676a9460 index=11 gconfd-2-2696 [000] 4467.269005: grab_cache_page_write_begin <-ext3_write_begin Which shows that a lot of calls from ext3_write_begin will result in the page returned by "find_lock_page" will be NULL. Cc: Nick Piggin Cc: Andrew Morton Signed-off-by: Steven Rostedt --- mm/filemap.c | 2 +- 1 files changed, 1 insertions(+), 1 deletions(-) diff --git a/mm/filemap.c b/mm/filemap.c index ea89840..d557fe7 100644 --- a/mm/filemap.c +++ b/mm/filemap.c @@ -2218,7 +2218,7 @@ struct page *grab_cache_page_write_begin(struct address_space *mapping, gfp_notmask = __GFP_FS; repeat: page = find_lock_page(mapping, index); - if (likely(page)) + if (page) return page; page = __page_cache_alloc(mapping_gfp_mask(mapping) & ~gfp_notmask); -- 1.7.2.3 -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/