From: Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> This is not a bug fix. It was found by inspection, but I believe that it is confusing as it stands. First, page_ref_freeze() is implemented internally with: atomic_cmpxchg(&page->_refcount, expected, 0) == expected The "cmp" part of cmpxchg is making sure that _refcount==expected which means that there's an implicit check here, equivalent to: page_count(page) == expected_count This appears to have originated in "e286781: mm: speculative page references", which is pretty ancient. This check is also somewhat dangerous to have here because it might lead someone to think that page_ref_freeze() *doesn't* do its own page_count() checking. Remove the unnecessary check. Signed-off-by: Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Nicholas Piggin <npiggin@xxxxxxxxx> Cc: Andrew Morton <akpm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Matthew Wilcox (Oracle) <willy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Yang Shi <yang.shi@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: linux-mm@xxxxxxxxx Cc: linux-kernel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx --- b/mm/migrate.c | 3 ++- 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-) diff -puN mm/migrate.c~remove_extra_page_count_check mm/migrate.c --- a/mm/migrate.c~remove_extra_page_count_check 2020-05-01 14:00:42.331525924 -0700 +++ b/mm/migrate.c 2020-05-01 14:00:42.336525924 -0700 @@ -425,11 +425,12 @@ int migrate_page_move_mapping(struct add newzone = page_zone(newpage); xas_lock_irq(&xas); - if (page_count(page) != expected_count || xas_load(&xas) != page) { + if (xas_load(&xas) != page) { xas_unlock_irq(&xas); return -EAGAIN; } + /* Freezing will fail if page_count()!=expected_count */ if (!page_ref_freeze(page, expected_count)) { xas_unlock_irq(&xas); return -EAGAIN; _