[PATCH] mm: Fixup the condition whether the page cache is free

[Johannes Weiner]

On Wed, Mar 06, 2013 at 09:04:55AM +0800, Simon Jeons wrote:
> Hi Johannes,
> On 03/04/2013 11:09 PM, Johannes Weiner wrote:
> >On Mon, Mar 04, 2013 at 09:54:26AM +0800, Li Haifeng wrote:
> >>When a page cache is to reclaim, we should to decide whether the page
> >>cache is free.
> >>IMO, the condition whether a page cache is free should be 3 in page
> >>frame reclaiming. The reason lists as below.
> >>
> >>When page is allocated, the page->_count is 1(code fragment is code-1 ).
> >>And when the page is allocated for reading files from extern disk, the
> >>page->_count will increment 1 by page_cache_get() in
> >>add_to_page_cache_locked()(code fragment is code-2). When the page is to
> >>reclaim, the isolated LRU list also increase the page->_count(code
> >>fragment is code-3).
> >The page count is initialized to 1, but that does not stay with the
> >object.  It's a reference that is passed to the allocating task, which
> >drops it again when it's done with the page.  I.e. the pattern is like
> >this:
> >
> >instantiation:
> >page = page_cache_alloc()	/* instantiator reference -> 1 */
> >add_to_page_cache(page, mapping, offset)
> >   get_page(page)		/* page cache reference -> 2 */
> >lru_cache_add(page)
> >   get_page(page)		/* pagevec reference -> 3 */
> >/* ...initiate read, write, associate buffers, ... */
> >page_cache_release(page)	/* drop instantiator reference -> 2 + private */
> >
> >reclaim:
> >lru_add_drain()
> >   page_cache_release(page)	/* drop pagevec reference -> 1 + private */
> 
> IIUC, when add page to lru will lead to add to pagevec firstly, and
> pagevec will take one reference, so if lru will take over the
> reference taken by pagevec when page transmit from pagevec to lru?
> or just drop the reference and lru will not take reference for page?

The LRU does not hold a reference, it would not make sense.  The
pagevec only needs one because it would be awkward to remove a
concurrently freed page out of a pagevec, but unlinking a page from
the LRU is easy.  See mm/swap.c::__page_cache_release() and friends.