On Tue, 25 Sep 2012 17:13:27 +0900
Minchan Kim [off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

I see. To me, your saying is better than current comment.
I hope comment could be more explicit.

diff --git a/mm/compaction.c b/mm/compaction.c
index df01b4e..f1d2cc7 100644
--- a/mm/compaction.c
+++ b/mm/compaction.c

@@ -542,8 +542,9 @@ isolate_migratepages_range(struct zone *zone, struct compact_control *cc,
                 * splitting and collapsing (collapsing has already happened
                 * if PageLRU is set) but the lock is not necessarily taken
                 * here and it is wasteful to take it just to check transhuge.
-                * Check transhuge without lock and skip if it's either a
-                * transhuge or hugetlbfs page.
+                * Check transhuge without lock and *skip* if it's either a
+                * transhuge or hugetlbfs page because it's not safe to call
+                * compound_order.
                 */
                if (PageTransHuge(page)) {
                        if (!locked)

Going a bit further:

--- a/mm/compaction.c~mm-compaction-acquire-the-zone-lru_lock-as-late-as-possible-fix
+++ a/mm/compaction.c

@@ -415,7 +415,8 @@ isolate_migratepages_range(struct zone *
 		 * if PageLRU is set) but the lock is not necessarily taken
 		 * here and it is wasteful to take it just to check transhuge.
 		 * Check transhuge without lock and skip if it's either a
-		 * transhuge or hugetlbfs page.
+		 * transhuge or hugetlbfs page because calling compound_order()
+		 * requires lru_lock to exclude isolation and splitting.
 		 */
 		if (PageTransHuge(page)) {
 			if (!locked)

_


but...  the requirement to hold lru_lock for compound_order() is news
to me.  It doesn't seem to be written down or explained anywhere, and
one wonders why the cheerily undocumented compound_lock() doesn't have
this effect.  What's going on here??