On Fri, Dec 17, 2021 at 3:34 AM David Hildenbrand [off-list ref] wrote:

+ * If the child takes a read-only pin on such a page (i.e., FOLL_WRITE is not
+ * set) and then unmaps the target page, we have:
+ *
+ * * page has mapcount == 1 and refcount > 1

All these games with mapcount makes me think this is still broken.

mapcount has been a horribly broken thing in the past, and I'm not
convinced it's not a broken thing now.

+       vmf->page = vm_normal_page(vmf->vma, vmf->address, vmf->orig_pte);
+       if (vmf->page && PageAnon(vmf->page) && !PageKsm(vmf->page) &&
+           page_mapcount(vmf->page) > 1) {

What keeps the mapcount stable in here?

And I still believe that the whole notion that "COW should use
mapcount" is pure and utter garbage.

If we are doing a COW, we need an *exclusive* access to the page. That
is not mapcount, that is the page ref.

mapcount is insane, and I think this is making this worse again.

                Linus