On Fri, Oct 26, 2018 at 11:11:18AM -0700, Bart Van Assche wrote: > On Fri, 2018-10-26 at 10:43 -0700, Matthew Wilcox wrote: > > On Fri, Oct 26, 2018 at 09:49:05AM -0700, Bart Van Assche wrote: > > > diff --git a/mm/rmap.c b/mm/rmap.c > > > index 1e79fac3186b..2a953d3b7431 100644 > > > --- a/mm/rmap.c > > > +++ b/mm/rmap.c > > > @@ -81,6 +81,7 @@ static inline struct anon_vma *anon_vma_alloc(void) > > > > > > anon_vma = kmem_cache_alloc(anon_vma_cachep, GFP_KERNEL); > > > if (anon_vma) { > > > + init_rwsem(&anon_vma->rwsem); > > > atomic_set(&anon_vma->refcount, 1); > > > anon_vma->degree = 1; /* Reference for first vma */ > > > anon_vma->parent = anon_vma; > > > > Why is this needed? The anon_vma_ctor() already calls init_rwsem(). > > > > (I suspect this is one of those ctors that isn't actually useful and > > should be inlined into anon_vma_alloc()) > > Without that call I noticed that the "nolockdep" variable was sometimes set > when down_write() got called. Does that mean that it can happen that an > anon_vma structure is freed without releasing anon_vma->rwsem? How strange. The only call to down_write_nolockdep() you added (in this patch) was for the inode->i_mutex. So how could that possibly affect the anon_vma->rwsem? Are you seeing some kind of corruption here? Maybe try initialising ->nolockdep with some 32-bit magic value, and reporting if it's not 0 or the magic value will lead to some kind of insight?