[PATCH] page invalidation cleanup
Clean up the invalidate code, and use a common function to safely remove
the page from pagecache.
Signed-off-by: Nick Piggin <npiggin@suse.de>
Cc: Hugh Dickins <hugh@veritas.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
diff --git a/mm/vmscan.c b/mm/vmscan.c
index 87d34099..eca7031 100644
--- a/mm/vmscan.c
+++ b/mm/vmscan.c
@@ -384,11 +384,30 @@
BUG_ON(mapping != page_mapping(page));
write_lock_irq(&mapping->tree_lock);
-
/*
- * The non-racy check for busy page. It is critical to check
- * PageDirty _after_ making sure that the page is freeable and
- * not in use by anybody. (pagecache + us == 2)
+ * The non racy check for a busy page.
+ *
+ * Must be careful with the order of the tests. When someone has
+ * a ref to the page, it may be possible that they dirty it then
+ * drop the reference. So if PageDirty is tested before page_count
+ * here, then the following race may occur:
+ *
+ * get_user_pages(&page);
+ * [user mapping goes away]
+ * write_to(page);
+ * !PageDirty(page) [good]
+ * SetPageDirty(page);
+ * put_page(page);
+ * !page_count(page) [good, discard it]
+ *
+ * [oops, our write_to data is lost]
+ *
+ * Reversing the order of the tests ensures such a situation cannot
+ * escape unnoticed. The smp_rmb is needed to ensure the page->flags
+ * load is not satisfied before that of page->_count.
+ *
+ * Note that if SetPageDirty is always performed via set_page_dirty,
+ * and thus under tree_lock, then this ordering is not required.
*/
if (unlikely(page_count(page) != 2))
goto cannot_free;