From 6c14466cc00ff13121ae782d33d9df0fde20b124 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Mel Gorman Date: Thu, 23 Jan 2014 15:53:38 -0800 Subject: 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 Acked-by: Rafael Aquini Acked-by: Minchan Kim Cc: Laura Abbott Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds --- mm/compaction.c | 5 ++++- 1 file changed, 4 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-) (limited to 'mm/compaction.c') diff --git a/mm/compaction.c b/mm/compaction.c index e0ab02d70f13..b48c5259ea33 100644 --- a/mm/compaction.c +++ b/mm/compaction.c @@ -523,7 +523,10 @@ isolate_migratepages_range(struct zone *zone, struct compact_control *cc, if (!isolation_suitable(cc, page)) goto next_pageblock; - /* Skip if free */ + /* + * Skip if free. page_order cannot be used without zone->lock + * as nothing prevents parallel allocations or buddy merging. + */ if (PageBuddy(page)) continue; -- cgit v1.2.3-55-g7522