Date: Mon, 21 Aug 2017 09:02:18 -0400
From: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org>
To: Michal Hocko <mhocko@kernel.org>
Cc: Brad Bolen <bradleybolen@gmail.com>, Jaegeuk Kim <jaegeuk@kernel.org>,
        Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>,
        Vladimir Davydov <vdavydov.dev@gmail.com>, linux-mm@kvack.org,
        cgroups@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: kernel panic on null pointer on page->mem_cgroup
Message-ID: <20170821130218.GA1371@cmpxchg.org>
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 <20170808200849.GA1104@cmpxchg.org>
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On Thu, Aug 10, 2017 at 01:56:05PM +0200, Michal Hocko wrote:
> On Wed 09-08-17 14:38:25, Johannes Weiner wrote:
> > The issue is that writeback doesn't hold a page reference and the page
> > might get freed after PG_writeback is cleared (and the mapping is
> > unlocked) in test_clear_page_writeback(). The stat functions looking
> > up the page's node or zone are safe, as those attributes are static
> > across allocation and free cycles. But page->mem_cgroup is not, and it
> > will get cleared if we race with truncation or migration.
> 
> Is there anything that prevents us from holding a reference on a page
> under writeback?

Hm, I'm hesitant to add redundant life-time management to the page
there just for memcg, which is not always configured in.

Pinning the memcg instead is slightly more complex, but IMO has the
complexity in a preferrable place.

Would you agree?