Another way (not sure if it's good or bad, but it'd clearly avoid the restarting locks in rmap_walk) would be to allocate a shared lock, and still share the lock like the anon_vma was shared before. So we have shorter chains to walk, but still a larger lock, so we've to take just one and be safe. spin_lock(&vma->anon_vma->shared_anon_vma_lock->lock) something like that... -- To unsubscribe, send a message with 'unsubscribe linux-mm' in the body to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxx For more info on Linux MM, see: http://www.linux-mm.org/ . Don't email: <a href=mailto:"dont@xxxxxxxxx";> email@xxxxxxxxx </a>