diff options
| -rw-r--r-- | include/linux/mm_types.h | 24 |
1 files changed, 23 insertions, 1 deletions
diff --git a/include/linux/mm_types.h b/include/linux/mm_types.h index 3e7e99784656..3f1fae8fb140 100644 --- a/include/linux/mm_types.h +++ b/include/linux/mm_types.h @@ -31,7 +31,29 @@ struct hmm; * it to keep track of whatever it is we are using the page for at the * moment. Note that we have no way to track which tasks are using * a page, though if it is a pagecache page, rmap structures can tell us - * who is mapping it. + * who is mapping it. If you allocate the page using alloc_pages(), you + * can use some of the space in struct page for your own purposes. + * + * Pages that were once in the page cache may be found under the RCU lock + * even after they have been recycled to a different purpose. The page + * cache reads and writes some of the fields in struct page to pin the + * page before checking that it's still in the page cache. It is vital + * that all users of struct page: + * 1. Use the first word as PageFlags. + * 2. Clear or preserve bit 0 of page->compound_head. It is used as + * PageTail for compound pages, and the page cache must not see false + * positives. Some users put a pointer here (guaranteed to be at least + * 4-byte aligned), other users avoid using the field altogether. + * 3. page->_refcount must either not be used, or must be used in such a + * way that other CPUs temporarily incrementing and then decrementing the + * refcount does not cause problems. On receiving the page from + * alloc_pages(), the refcount will be positive. + * 4. Either preserve page->_mapcount or restore it to -1 before freeing it. + * + * If you allocate pages of order > 0, you can use the fields in the struct + * page associated with each page, but bear in mind that the pages may have + * been inserted individually into the page cache, so you must use the above + * four fields in a compatible way for each struct page. * * SLUB uses cmpxchg_double() to atomically update its freelist and * counters. That requires that freelist & counters be adjacent and |