Re: [patch v2] vmscan: protect zone rotation stats by lru lock

[Rik van Riel]

Andrew Morton wrote:
> On Mon, 01 Dec 2008 03:00:35 +0100
> Johannes Weiner <hannes@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> > The zone's rotation statistics must not be accessed without the
> > corresponding LRU lock held.  Fix an unprotected write in
> > shrink_active_list().
>
> I don't think it really matters.  It's quite common in that code to do
> unlocked, racy update to statistics such as this.  Because on those
> rare occasions where a race does happen, there's a small glitch in the
> reclaim logic which nobody will notice anyway.
>
> Of course, this does need to be done with some care, to ensure the
> glitch _will_ be small.

Processing at most SWAP_CLUSTER_MAX pages at once probably
ensures that glitches will be small most of the time.

The only way this could be a big problem is if we end up
racing with the divide-by-two logic in get_scan_ratio,
leaving the rotated pages a factor two higher than they
should be.

Putting all the writes to the stats under the LRU lock
should ensure that never happens.

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