Re: [RFC 2/6] mm/migrate_pages: split unmap_and_move() to _unmap() and _move()

Yang Shi
2022-09-28T01:49:52Z

On Tue, Sep 27, 2022 at 6:45 PM John Hubbard <jhubbard@nvidia.com> wrote:
>
> On 9/27/22 18:41, Huang, Ying wrote:
> >>>> I also agree that we cannot make any rules such as "do not lock > 1 page
> >>>> at the same time, elsewhere in the kernel", because it is already
> >>>> happening, for example in page-writeback.c, which locks PAGEVEC_SIZE
> >>>> (15) pages per batch [1].
> >>
> >> That's not really the case though. The inner loop of write_cache_page()
> >> only ever locks one page at a time, either directly via the
> >> unlock_page() on L2338 (those goto's are amazing) or indirectly via
> >> (*writepage)() on L2359.
> >>
> >> So there's no deadlock potential there because unlocking any previously
> >> locked page(s) doesn't depend on obtaining the lock for another page.
> >> Unless I've missed something?
> >
> > Yes. This is my understanding too after checking ext4_writepage().
> >
>
> Yes, I missed the ".writepage() shall unlock the page" design point. Now
> it seems much more reasonable and safer. :)

.writepage is deprecated (see
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-fsdevel/20220719041311.709250-1-hch@lst.de/),
write back actually uses .writepages.

>
> thanks,
>
> --
> John Hubbard
> NVIDIA
>