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Message-ID: <b001adf2-238d-1708-673d-6f512a53e1e9@redhat.com>
Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2023 17:32:37 +0200
From: David Hildenbrand <david@...hat.com>
To: Peter Xu <peterx@...hat.com>
Cc: Matthew Wilcox <willy@...radead.org>,
Ryan Roberts <ryan.roberts@....com>,
linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, linux-mm@...ck.org,
linux-doc@...r.kernel.org,
Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
Jonathan Corbet <corbet@....net>,
Mike Kravetz <mike.kravetz@...cle.com>,
Hugh Dickins <hughd@...gle.com>,
Yin Fengwei <fengwei.yin@...el.com>,
Yang Shi <shy828301@...il.com>, Zi Yan <ziy@...dia.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH mm-unstable v1] mm: add a total mapcount for large folios
On 11.08.23 17:18, Peter Xu wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 11, 2023 at 12:27:13AM +0200, David Hildenbrand wrote:
>> On 10.08.23 23:48, Matthew Wilcox wrote:
>>> On Thu, Aug 10, 2023 at 04:57:11PM -0400, Peter Xu wrote:
>>>> AFAICS if that patch was all correct (while I'm not yet sure..), you can
>>>> actually fit your new total mapcount field into page 1 so even avoid the
>>>> extra cacheline access. You can have a look: the trick is refcount for
>>>> tail page 1 is still seems to be free on 32 bits (if that was your worry
>>>> before). Then it'll be very nice if to keep Hugh's counter all in tail 1.
>>>
>>> No, refcount must be 0 on all tail pages. We rely on this in many places
>>> in the MM.
>>
>> Very right.
>
> Obviously I could have missed this in the past.. can I ask for an example
> explaining why refcount will be referenced before knowing it's a head?
I think the issue is, when coming from a PFN walker (or GUP-fast), you
might see "oh, this is a folio, let's lookup the head page". And you do
that.
Then, you try taking a reference on that head page. (see try_get_folio()).
But as you didn't hold a reference on the folio yet, it can happily get
freed + repurposed in the meantime, so maybe it's not a head page anymore.
So if the field would get reused for something else, grabbing a
reference would corrupt whatever is now stored in there.
--
Cheers,
David / dhildenb
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