Re: [PATCH v2 5/5] mm/madvise: eliminate very confusing manipulation of prev VMA

[SeongJae Park <sj@kernel.org>]

On Fri, 20 Jun 2025 16:33:05 +0100 Lorenzo Stoakes <lorenzo.stoakes@oracle.com> wrote:

> The madvise code has for the longest time had very confusing code around
> the 'prev' VMA pointer passed around various functions which, in all cases
> except madvise_update_vma(), is unused and instead simply updated as soon
> as the function is invoked.
> 
> To compound the confusion, the prev pointer is also used to indicate to the
> caller that the mmap lock has been dropped and that we can therefore not
> safely access the end of the current VMA (which might have been updated by
> madvise_update_vma()).
> 
> Clear up this confusion by not setting prev = vma anywhere except in
> madvise_walk_vmas(), update all references to prev which will always be
> equal to vma after madvise_vma_behavior() is invoked, and adding a flag to
> indicate that the lock has been dropped to make this explicit.
> 
> Additionally, drop a redundant BUG_ON() from madvise_collapse(), which is
> simply reiterating the BUG_ON(mmap_locked) above it (note that BUG_ON() is
> not appropriate here, but we leave existing code as-is).
> 
> We finally adjust the madvise_walk_vmas() logic to be a little clearer -
> delaying the assignment of the end of the range to the start of the new
> range until the last moment and handling the lock being dropped scenario
> immediately.
> 
> Additionally add some explanatory comments.
> 
> Reviewed-by: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz>
> Signed-off-by: Lorenzo Stoakes <lorenzo.stoakes@oracle.com>

Reviewed-by: SeongJae Park <sj@kernel.org>


Thanks,
SJ

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