Add some more description on the limitations for smaps/maps readings, as well as some guaruntees we can make. Changelog: v2: Adopt Dave Hansen's revision from v1 as the description. Signed-off-by: Robert Ho <robert.hu@xxxxxxxxx> --- Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt | 12 ++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 12 insertions(+) diff --git a/Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt b/Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt index 68080ad..daa096f 100644 --- a/Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt +++ b/Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt @@ -515,6 +515,18 @@ be vanished or the reverse -- new added. This file is only present if the CONFIG_MMU kernel configuration option is enabled. +Note: reading /proc/PID/maps or /proc/PID/smaps is inherently racy (consistent +output can be achieved only in the single read call). +This typically manifests when doing partial reads of these files while the +memory map is being modified. Despite the races, we do provide the following +guarantees: + +1) The mapped addresses never go backwards, which implies no two + regions will ever overlap. +2) If there is something at a given vaddr during the entirety of the + life of the smaps/maps walk, there will be some output for it. + + The /proc/PID/clear_refs is used to reset the PG_Referenced and ACCESSED/YOUNG bits on both physical and virtual pages associated with a process, and the soft-dirty bit on pte (see Documentation/vm/soft-dirty.txt for details). -- 1.8.3.1 -- To unsubscribe, send a message with 'unsubscribe linux-mm' in the body to majordomo@xxxxxxxxx. For more info on Linux MM, see: http://www.linux-mm.org/ . Don't email: <a href=mailto:"dont@xxxxxxxxx";> email@xxxxxxxxx </a>