On 09/18/2012 06:05 PM, Andrea Arcangeli wrote:
In many places !pmd_present has been converted to pmd_none. For pmds that's equivalent and pmd_none is quicker so using pmd_none is better. However (unless we delete pmd_present) we should provide an accurate pmd_present too. This will avoid the risk of code thinking the pmd is non present because it's under __split_huge_page_map, see the pmd_mknotpresent there and the comment above it. If the page has been mprotected as PROT_NONE, it would also lead to a pmd_present false negative in the same way as the race with split_huge_page. Because the PSE bit stays on at all times (both during split_huge_page and when the _PAGE_PROTNONE bit get set), we could only check for the PSE bit, but checking the PROTNONE bit too is still good to remember pmd_present must always keep PROT_NONE into account.
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This explains a not reproducible BUG_ON that was seldom reported on the lists. The same issue is in pmd_large, it would go wrong with both PROT_NONE and if it races with split_huge_page. Signed-off-by: Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@xxxxxxxxxx>
Acked-by: Rik van Riel <riel@xxxxxxxxxx> -- 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>