This test essentially opens a file (via open(2)), writes something, opens it via a mmaped file object *read only* (via fopen(...,"rm)) reads what was writtent, writes some more and reads it via the mmaped file object. This last read fails to get the data on parisc. The problem is that our CPU cache is virtually indexed, and the page the write is storing the data to (in the buffer cache) and the page it is mmapped to have the same physical, but different virtual addresses. We need the write() to trigger a cache update via flush_dcache_page to get the virtually indexed cache in sync. The reason this doesn't happen is because the mapping is not on the mmap_shared list that flush_dcache_page() updates. And the reason it's not on the correct list is because there's a check in mm/mmap.c:do_mmap_pgoff() that drops the VM_SHARED flag on the mapping if the file wasn't opened for writing (about line 541). Semantically, it seems that whether the mmaping sees a write or not on a different descriptor shouldn't depend on whether the underlying file was opened read only or read write, so I think the glibc test is correct, and we should keep the VM_SHARED flag even if the underlying file was opened read only. The patch is attached (and makes the test pass on parisc). Comments? James