On Tue, 18 Oct 2016 21:12:45 +0530 "Aneesh Kumar K.V" [off-list ref] wrote:

We cannot use the pte value used in set_pte_at for pte_same comparison,
because archs like ppc64, filter/add new pte flag in set_pte_at. Instead
fetch the pte value inside hugetlb_cow. We are comparing pte value to
make sure the pte didn't change since we dropped the page table lock.
hugetlb_cow get called with page table lock held, and we can take a copy
of the pte value before we drop the page table lock.

With hugetlbfs, we optimize the MAP_PRIVATE write fault path with no
previous mapping (huge_pte_none entries), by forcing a cow in the fault
path. This avoid take an addition fault to covert a read-only mapping
to read/write. Here we were comparing a recently instantiated pte (via
set_pte_at) to the pte values from linux page table. As explained above
on ppc64 such pte_same check returned wrong result, resulting in us
taking an additional fault on ppc64.

From my reading this is a minor performance improvement and a -stable

backport isn't needed.  But it is unclear whether the impact warrants a
4.9 merge.

Please be careful about describing end-user visible impacts when fixing
bugs, thanks.