Re: Locking comment on shrink_caches()

Benjamin LaHaise
2001-09-25T21:00:54Z

On Tue, Sep 25, 2001 at 01:29:05PM -0700, David S. Miller wrote:
> Well, there are two things happing in that patch. Per-hash chain
> locks for the page cache itself, and the lock added to the address
> space for that page list.

Last time I looked, those patches made the already ugly vm locking
even worse. I'd rather try to use some of the rcu techniques for
page cache lookup, and per-page locking for page cache removal
which will lead to *cleaner* code as well as a much more scalable
kernel.

Keep in mind that just because a lock is on someone's hitlist doesn't
mean that it is for the right reasons. Look at the io_request_lock
that is held around the bounce buffer copies in the scsi midlayer.
*shudder*

-ben