Re: [PATCH] [13/16] HWPOISON: The high level memory error handler in the VM v3

Nick Piggin
2009-06-09T12:17:28Z

On Tue, Jun 09, 2009 at 08:15:10PM +0800, Wu Fengguang wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 09, 2009 at 06:48:25PM +0800, Nick Piggin wrote:
> > On Tue, Jun 09, 2009 at 02:48:55PM +0800, Wu Fengguang wrote:
> > > On Mon, Jun 08, 2009 at 10:46:53PM +0800, Nai Xia wrote:
> > > > I meant PG_writeback stops writers to index---->struct page mapping.
> > >
> > > It's protected by the radix tree RCU locks. Period.
> > >
> > > If you are referring to the reverse mapping: page->mapping is procted
> > > by PG_lock. No one should make assumption that it won't change under
> > > page writeback.
> >
> > Well... I think probably PG_writeback should be enough. Phrased another
> > way: I think it is a very bad idea to truncate PG_writeback pages out of
> > pagecache. Does anything actually do that?
>
> There shall be no one. OK I will follow that convention..
>
> But as I stated it is only safe do rely on the fact "no one truncates
> PG_writeback pages" in end_writeback_io handlers. And I suspect if
> there does exist such a handler, it could be trivially converted to
> take the page lock.

Well, the writeback submitter first sets writeback, then unlocks
the page. I don't think he wants a truncate coming in at that point.