The stable_nodes can become stale at any time if the underlying pages gets freed. The stable_node gets collected and removed from the stable rbtree if that is detected during the rbtree lookups. Don't fail the lookup if running into stale stable_nodes, just restart the lookup after collecting the stale stable_nodes. Otherwise the CPU spent in the preparation stage is wasted and the lookup must be repeated at the next loop potentially failing a second time in a second stale stable_node. If we don't prune aggressively we delay the merging of the unstable node candidates and at the same time we delay the freeing of the stale stable_nodes. Keeping stale stable_nodes around wastes memory and it can't provide any benefit. Signed-off-by: Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@xxxxxxxxxx> Acked-by: Hugh Dickins <hughd@xxxxxxxxxx> --- mm/ksm.c | 32 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++----- 1 file changed, 27 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-) diff --git a/mm/ksm.c b/mm/ksm.c index e87dec7..9f182f9 100644 --- a/mm/ksm.c +++ b/mm/ksm.c @@ -1177,8 +1177,18 @@ again: cond_resched(); stable_node = rb_entry(*new, struct stable_node, node); tree_page = get_ksm_page(stable_node, false); - if (!tree_page) - return NULL; + if (!tree_page) { + /* + * If we walked over a stale stable_node, + * get_ksm_page() will call rb_erase() and it + * may rebalance the tree from under us. So + * restart the search from scratch. Returning + * NULL would be safe too, but we'd generate + * false negative insertions just because some + * stable_node was stale. + */ + goto again; + } ret = memcmp_pages(page, tree_page); put_page(tree_page); @@ -1254,12 +1264,14 @@ static struct stable_node *stable_tree_insert(struct page *kpage) unsigned long kpfn; struct rb_root *root; struct rb_node **new; - struct rb_node *parent = NULL; + struct rb_node *parent; struct stable_node *stable_node; kpfn = page_to_pfn(kpage); nid = get_kpfn_nid(kpfn); root = root_stable_tree + nid; +again: + parent = NULL; new = &root->rb_node; while (*new) { @@ -1269,8 +1281,18 @@ static struct stable_node *stable_tree_insert(struct page *kpage) cond_resched(); stable_node = rb_entry(*new, struct stable_node, node); tree_page = get_ksm_page(stable_node, false); - if (!tree_page) - return NULL; + if (!tree_page) { + /* + * If we walked over a stale stable_node, + * get_ksm_page() will call rb_erase() and it + * may rebalance the tree from under us. So + * restart the search from scratch. Returning + * NULL would be safe too, but we'd generate + * false negative insertions just because some + * stable_node was stale. + */ + goto again; + } ret = memcmp_pages(kpage, tree_page); put_page(tree_page); -- 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>