On Wed, Sep 11, 2019 at 08:26:52PM -0700, Mike Kravetz wrote: > All this got me wondering if we really need to take i_mmap_rwsem in write > mode here. We are not changing the tree, only traversing it looking for > a suitable vma. > > Unless I am missing something, the hugetlb code only ever takes the semaphore > in write mode; never read. Could this have been the result of changing the > tree semaphore to read/write? Instead of analyzing all the code, the easiest > and safest thing would have been to take all accesses in write mode. I was wondering the same thing. It was changed here: commit 83cde9e8ba95d180eaefefe834958fbf7008cf39 Author: Davidlohr Bueso <dave@xxxxxxxxxxxx> Date: Fri Dec 12 16:54:21 2014 -0800 mm: use new helper functions around the i_mmap_mutex Convert all open coded mutex_lock/unlock calls to the i_mmap_[lock/unlock]_write() helpers. and a subsequent patch said: This conversion is straightforward. For now, all users take the write lock. There were subsequent patches which changed a few places c8475d144abb1e62958cc5ec281d2a9e161c1946 1acf2e040721564d579297646862b8ea3dd4511b d28eb9c861f41aa2af4cfcc5eeeddff42b13d31e 874bfcaf79e39135cd31e1cfc9265cf5222d1ec3 3dec0ba0be6a532cac949e02b853021bf6d57dad but I don't know why this one wasn't changed. (I was also wondering about caching a potentially sharable page table in the address_space to avoid having to walk the VMA tree at all if that one happened to be sharable).