Re: changing mm->mmap_sem (was: Re: system call for process information?)

["Stephen C. Tweedie" <sct@redhat.com>]

Hi,

On Fri, Mar 16, 2001 at 08:50:25AM -0300, Rik van Riel wrote:
> On Fri, 16 Mar 2001, Stephen C. Tweedie wrote:
> 
> > > Write locks would be used in the code where we actually want
> > > to change the VMA list and page faults would use an extra lock
> > > to protect against each other (possibly a per-pagetable lock
> > 
> > Why do we need another lock?  The critical section where we do the
> > final update on the pte _already_ takes the page table spinlock to
> > avoid races against the swapper.
> 
> The problem is that mmap_sem seems to be protecting the list
> of VMAs, so taking _only_ the page_table_lock could let a VMA
> change under us while a page fault is underway ...

Right, I'm not suggesting removing that: making the mmap_sem
read/write is fine, but yes, we still need that semaphore.  But as for
the "page faults would use an extra lock to protect against each
other" bit --- we already have another lock, the page table lock,
which can be used in this way, so ANOTHER lock should be unnecessary.

--Stephen