mm/madvise: eliminate very confusing manipulation of prev VMA
authorLorenzo Stoakes <lorenzo.stoakes@oracle.com>
Fri, 20 Jun 2025 15:33:05 +0000 (16:33 +0100)
committerAndrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Sun, 13 Jul 2025 23:38:13 +0000 (16:38 -0700)
commite24d552a17e92714d4f62e112d536babd6428acb
treead5b39e9573a1664a14c9323afad38d210609aef
parent946fc11af061c3cd08943a96f6ea8c7e6fec95e1
mm/madvise: eliminate very confusing manipulation of prev VMA

The madvise code has for the longest time had very confusing code around
the 'prev' VMA pointer passed around various functions which, in all cases
except madvise_update_vma(), is unused and instead simply updated as soon
as the function is invoked.

To compound the confusion, the prev pointer is also used to indicate to
the caller that the mmap lock has been dropped and that we can therefore
not safely access the end of the current VMA (which might have been
updated by madvise_update_vma()).

Clear up this confusion by not setting prev = vma anywhere except in
madvise_walk_vmas(), update all references to prev which will always be
equal to vma after madvise_vma_behavior() is invoked, and adding a flag to
indicate that the lock has been dropped to make this explicit.

Additionally, drop a redundant BUG_ON() from madvise_collapse(), which is
simply reiterating the BUG_ON(mmap_locked) above it (note that BUG_ON() is
not appropriate here, but we leave existing code as-is).

We finally adjust the madvise_walk_vmas() logic to be a little clearer -
delaying the assignment of the end of the range to the start of the new
range until the last moment and handling the lock being dropped scenario
immediately.

Additionally add some explanatory comments.

[lorenzo.stoakes@oracle.com: fix very subtle bug]
Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/dca94cde-8afb-4eab-8e57-3f508624d670@lucifer.local
Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/63d281c5df2e64225ab5b4bda398b45e22818701.1750433500.git.lorenzo.stoakes@oracle.com
Signed-off-by: Lorenzo Stoakes <lorenzo.stoakes@oracle.com>
Reviewed-by: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz>
Reviewed-by: Zi Yan <ziy@nvidia.com>
Reviewed-by: SeongJae Park <sj@kernel.org>
Cc: Baolin Wang <baolin.wang@linux.alibaba.com>
Cc: Barry Song <baohua@kernel.org>
Cc: David Hildenbrand <david@redhat.com>
Cc: Dev Jain <dev.jain@arm.com>
Cc: Jann Horn <jannh@google.com>
Cc: Lance Yang <ioworker0@gmail.com>
Cc: Liam Howlett <liam.howlett@oracle.com>
Cc: Mariano Pache <npache@redhat.com>
Cc: Ryan Roberts <ryan.roberts@arm.com>
Cc: Suren Baghdasaryan <surenb@google.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
include/linux/huge_mm.h
mm/khugepaged.c
mm/madvise.c