Re: [PATCH 1/4] mm/rmap: per anon_vma lock

Ingo Molnar
2013-11-01T09:29:48Z

* Michel Lespinasse <walken@google.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Nov 1, 2013 at 1:43 AM, Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org> wrote:
>
> > AFAICT this isn't correct at all. We used to protect the vma
> > interval tree with the root lock, now we don't. All we've got
> > left is the mmap_sem, but anon_vma chains can cross
> > address-spaces and thus we're up some creek without no paddle.
>
> Yes, that was my first thought as well (though I wanted to double
> check at first).
>
> I also want to point out that lately we've seen several changes
> sent out that relax locking with no accompanying explanation of
> why the relaxed locking would be safe. Please don't do that -
> having a lot of performance data is worthless if you can't explain
> why the new locking is safe. And I'm not asking to prove a
> negative ('lack of any possible races') there, but at least in
> this case one could dig out why the root anon vma locking was
> introduced and if they think that this reason doesn't apply
> anymore, explain why...

By the looks of it it seems to be an unintentional bug, not an
intended feature.

Thanks,

Ingo