[PATCH 01/94] mm: Add vma_lookup()

Liam Howlett liam.howlett at oracle.com
Mon May 3 17:08:47 BST 2021


* Michel Lespinasse <michel at lespinasse.org> [210501 01:04]:
> On Wed, Apr 28, 2021 at 03:35:43PM +0000, Liam Howlett wrote:
> > Many places in the kernel use find_vma() to get a vma and then check the
> > start address of the vma to ensure the next vma was not returned.
> > 
> > Other places use the find_vma_intersection() call with add, addr + 1 as
> > the range; looking for just the vma at a specific address.
> > 
> > The third use of find_vma() is by developers who do not know that the
> > function starts searching at the provided address upwards for the next
> > vma.  This results in a bug that is often overlooked for a long time.
> > 
> > Adding the new vma_lookup() function will allow for cleaner code by
> > removing the find_vma() calls which check limits, making
> > find_vma_intersection() calls of a single address to be shorter, and
> > potentially reduce the incorrect uses of find_vma().
> > 
> > Signed-off-by: Liam R. Howlett <Liam.Howlett at Oracle.com>
> 
> This seems like a good API to have, and I agree it's less error prone than
> having every caller check the vma->vm_start address.
> 
> Minor nitpick, I would prefer if the implementation used find_vma()
> and then checked the vma->vm_start address - I don't like using [i, i+1)
> intervals to implement stabbing queries.

Okay, I will make that change.

> 
> But other than that, I think this (and the other patches adding
> corresponding call sites) is safe for merging.
> 

Thanks,
Liam


More information about the maple-tree mailing list