Re: [PATCH v1] mm: bad_page() checks bad_flags instead of page->flags for hwpoison page

Mel Gorman
2016-05-18T09:21:08Z

On Tue, May 17, 2016 at 04:42:55PM +0900, Naoya Horiguchi wrote:
> There's a race window between checking page->flags and unpoisoning, which
> taints kernel with "BUG: Bad page state". That's overkill. It's safer to
> use bad_flags to detect hwpoisoned page.
>

I'm not quite getting this one. Minimally, instead of = __PG_HWPOISON, it
should have been (bad_flags & __PG_POISON). As Vlastimil already pointed
out, __PG_HWPOISON can be 0. What I'm not getting is why this fixes the
race. The current race is

1. Check poison, set bad_flags
2. poison clears in parallel
3. Check page->flag state in bad_page and trigger warning

The code changes it to

1. Check poison, set bad_flags
2. poison clears in parallel
3. Check bad_flags and trigger warning

There is warning either way. What did I miss?

--
Mel Gorman
SUSE Labs