Re: Possible memory ordering bug in page reclaim?

[Herbert Xu <herbert@gondor.apana.org.au>]

Benjamin Herrenschmidt <benh@kernel.crashing.org> wrote:
>
>> > 1                                2
>> > find_get_page();
>> > write to page                    write_lock(tree_lock);
>> > SetPageDirty();                  if (page_count != 2
>> > put_page();                          || PageDirty())
>> > 
>> > Now I'm worried that 2 might see PageDirty *before* SetPageDirty in
>>                                   page->flags
>> > 1, and page_count *after* put_page in 1.
> 
> yup, now the question is wether PG_Dirty will be visible to CPU 2 before
> the page count is decremented right ? That depends on put_page, I
> suppose. If it's doing a simple atomic, there is an issue. But atomics
> with return has been so often abused as locks that they may have been
> implemented with a barrier... (On ppc64, it will do an eieio, thus I
> think it should be ok).

Yes atomic_add_negative should always be a barrier.

> There is also a problem the other way around. Write to page, then set
> page dirty... those writes may be visible to CPU 2 (that is the page
> content be dirty) before find_get_page even increased the page count,
> unless there is a barrier in there too.

find_get_page does a read_unlock_irq after the increment which also
serves as a barrier.

Cheers,
-- 
Visit Openswan at http://www.openswan.org/
Email: Herbert Xu ~{PmV>HI~} <herbert@gondor.apana.org.au>
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