Re: [PATCH v7 3/8] mm/rmap: Split try_to_munlock from try_to_unmap

[John Hubbard <jhubbard@nvidia.com>]

On 3/30/21 3:56 PM, Alistair Popple wrote:
...
>> +1 for renaming "munlock*" items to "mlock*", where applicable. good grief.
> 
> At least the situation was weird enough to prompt further investigation :)
> 
> Renaming to mlock* doesn't feel like the right solution to me either though. I
> am not sure if you saw me responding to myself earlier but I am thinking
> renaming try_to_munlock() -> page_mlocked() and try_to_munlock_one() ->
> page_mlock_one() might be better. Thoughts?
> 

Quite confused by this naming idea. Because: try_to_munlock() returns
void, so a boolean-style name such as "page_mlocked()" is already not a
good fit.

Even more important, though, is that try_to_munlock() is mlock-ing the
page, right? Is there some subtle point I'm missing? It really is doing
an mlock to the best of my knowledge here. Although the kerneldoc
comment for try_to_munlock() seems questionable too:

/**
  * try_to_munlock - try to munlock a page
  * @page: the page to be munlocked
  *
  * Called from munlock code.  Checks all of the VMAs mapping the page
  * to make sure nobody else has this page mlocked. The page will be
  * returned with PG_mlocked cleared if no other vmas have it mlocked.
  */

...because I don't see where, in *this* routine, it clears PG_mlocked!

Obviously we agree that a routine should be named based on what it does,
rather than on who calls it. So I think that still leads to:

      try_to_munlock() --> try_to_mlock()
      try_to_munlock_one() --> try_to_mlock_one()

Sorry if I'm missing something really obvious.


> This is actually inspired from a suggestion in Documentation/vm/unevictable-
> lru.rst which warns about this problem:
> 
> try_to_munlock() Reverse Map Scan
> ---------------------------------
> 
> .. warning::
>     [!] TODO/FIXME: a better name might be page_mlocked() - analogous to the
>     page_referenced() reverse map walker.
> 

This is actually rather bad advice! page_referenced() returns an
int-that-is-really-a-boolean, whereas try_to_munlock(), at least as it
stands now, returns void. Usually when I'm writing a TODO item, I'm in a
hurry, and I think that's what probably happened here, too. :)


>> Although, it seems reasonable to tack such renaming patches onto the tail
> end
>> of this series. But whatever works.
> 
> Unless anyone objects strongly I will roll the rename into this patch as there
> is only one caller of try_to_munlock.
> 
>   - Alistair
> 

No objections here. :)

thanks,
-- 
John Hubbard
NVIDIA