[PATCH] lighten mmlist_lock

Let's lighten the global spinlock mmlist_lock.

What's it for?
1. Its original role is to guard mmlist.
2. It later got a second role, to prevent get_task_mm from raising
   mm_users from the dead, just after it went down to 0.

Firstly consider the second: __exit_mm sets tsk->mm NULL while holding
task_lock before calling mmput; so mmlist_lock only guards against the
exceptional case, of get_task_mm on a kernel workthread which did AIO's
use_mm (which transiently sets its tsk->mm without raising mm_users) on an
mm now exiting.

Well, I don't think get_task_mm should succeed at all on use_mm tasks.
It's mainly used by /proc/pid and ptrace, seems at best confusing for those
to present the kernel thread as having a user mm, which it won't have a
moment later.  Define PF_BORROWED_MM, set in use_mm, clear in unuse_mm
(though we could just leave it), get_task_mm give NULL if set.

Secondly consider the first: and what's mmlist for?
1. Its original role was for swap_out to scan: rmap ended that in 2.5.27.
2. In 2.4.10 it got a second role, for try_to_unuse to scan for swapoff.

So, make mmlist a list of mms which maybe have pages on swap: add mm to
mmlist when first swap entry is assigned in try_to_unmap_one (pageout), or
in copy_page_range (fork); and mmput remove it from mmlist as before,
except usually list_empty and there's no need to lock.  drain_mmlist added
to swapoff, to empty out the mmlist if no swap is then in use.

mmput leave mm on mmlist until after its exit_mmap, so try_to_unmap_one can
still add mm to mmlist without worrying about the mm_users 0 case; but
try_to_unuse must avoid the mm_users 0 case (when an mm might be removed
from mmlist, and freed, while it's down in unuse_process): use
atomic_inc_return now all architectures support that.

Some of the detailed comments in try_to_unuse have grown out of date:
updated and trimmed some, but leave SWAP_MAP_MAX for another occasion.

Signed-off-by: Hugh Dickins <hugh@veritas.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>

1 files changed, 2 insertions, 3 deletions

diff --git a/include/linux/sched.h b/include/linux/sched.h
index c8f981f108d4..1c556975b2dd 100644
--- a/include/linux/sched.h
+++ b/include/linux/sched.h
@@ -218,7 +218,7 @@ struct mm_struct {
 	struct rw_semaphore mmap_sem;
 	spinlock_t page_table_lock;		/* Protects task page tables and mm->rss */
 
-	struct list_head mmlist;		/* List of all active mm's.  These are globally strung
+	struct list_head mmlist;		/* List of maybe swapped mm's.  These are globally strung
 						 * together off init_mm.mmlist, and are protected
 						 * by mmlist_lock
 						 */
@@ -252,8 +252,6 @@ struct mm_struct {
 	struct kioctx		default_kioctx;
 };
 
-extern int mmlist_nr;
-
 struct sighand_struct {
 	atomic_t		count;
 	struct k_sigaction	action[_NSIG];
@@ -722,6 +720,7 @@ do { if (atomic_dec_and_test(&(tsk)->usage)) __put_task_struct(tsk); } while(0)
 #define PF_SWAPOFF	0x00080000	/* I am in swapoff */
 #define PF_LESS_THROTTLE 0x00100000	/* Throttle me less: I clean memory */
 #define PF_SYNCWRITE	0x00200000	/* I am doing a sync write */
+#define PF_BORROWED_MM	0x00400000	/* I am a kthread doing use_mm */
 
 #ifdef CONFIG_SMP
 extern int set_cpus_allowed(task_t *p, cpumask_t new_mask);