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authorMel Gorman <mgorman@suse.de>2014-01-23 15:53:38 -0800
committerLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>2014-01-23 16:36:53 -0800
commit6c14466cc00ff13121ae782d33d9df0fde20b124 (patch)
tree65cf09a45f47de60638fdd1fe3140f9b8bdc27b9 /mm/internal.h
parent0eef615665ede1e0d603ea9ecca88c1da6f02234 (diff)
mm: improve documentation of page_order
Developers occasionally try and optimise PFN scanners by using page_order but miss that in general it requires zone->lock. This has happened twice for compaction.c and rejected both times. This patch clarifies the documentation of page_order and adds a note to compaction.c why page_order is not used. [akpm@linux-foundation.org: tweaks] [lauraa@codeaurora.org: Corrected a page_zone(page)->lock reference] Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mgorman@suse.de> Acked-by: Rafael Aquini <aquini@redhat.com> Acked-by: Minchan Kim <minchan@kernel.org> Cc: Laura Abbott <lauraa@codeaurora.org> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Diffstat (limited to 'mm/internal.h')
-rw-r--r--mm/internal.h8
1 files changed, 5 insertions, 3 deletions
diff --git a/mm/internal.h b/mm/internal.h
index 7e145e8cd1e6..612c14f5e0f5 100644
--- a/mm/internal.h
+++ b/mm/internal.h
@@ -143,9 +143,11 @@ isolate_migratepages_range(struct zone *zone, struct compact_control *cc,
#endif
/*
- * function for dealing with page's order in buddy system.
- * zone->lock is already acquired when we use these.
- * So, we don't need atomic page->flags operations here.
+ * This function returns the order of a free page in the buddy system. In
+ * general, page_zone(page)->lock must be held by the caller to prevent the
+ * page from being allocated in parallel and returning garbage as the order.
+ * If a caller does not hold page_zone(page)->lock, it must guarantee that the
+ * page cannot be allocated or merged in parallel.
*/
static inline unsigned long page_order(struct page *page)
{