1 files changed, 55 insertions, 63 deletions

diff --git a/mm/page-writeback.c b/mm/page-writeback.c
index 237107c1b08..be0efbde499 100644
--- a/mm/page-writeback.c
+++ b/mm/page-writeback.c
@@ -133,11 +133,9 @@ get_dirty_limits(long *pbackground, long *pdirty,
 
 #ifdef CONFIG_HIGHMEM
 	/*
-	 * If this mapping can only allocate from low memory,
-	 * we exclude high memory from our count.
+	 * We always exclude high memory from our count.
 	 */
-	if (mapping && !(mapping_gfp_mask(mapping) & __GFP_HIGHMEM))
-		available_memory -= totalhigh_pages;
+	available_memory -= totalhigh_pages;
 #endif
 
 
@@ -526,28 +524,25 @@ static struct notifier_block __cpuinitdata ratelimit_nb = {
 };
 
 /*
- * If the machine has a large highmem:lowmem ratio then scale back the default
- * dirty memory thresholds: allowing too much dirty highmem pins an excessive
- * number of buffer_heads.
+ * Called early on to tune the page writeback dirty limits.
+ *
+ * We used to scale dirty pages according to how total memory
+ * related to pages that could be allocated for buffers (by
+ * comparing nr_free_buffer_pages() to vm_total_pages.
+ *
+ * However, that was when we used "dirty_ratio" to scale with
+ * all memory, and we don't do that any more. "dirty_ratio"
+ * is now applied to total non-HIGHPAGE memory (by subtracting
+ * totalhigh_pages from vm_total_pages), and as such we can't
+ * get into the old insane situation any more where we had
+ * large amounts of dirty pages compared to a small amount of
+ * non-HIGHMEM memory.
+ *
+ * But we might still want to scale the dirty_ratio by how
+ * much memory the box has..
  */
 void __init page_writeback_init(void)
 {
-	long buffer_pages = nr_free_buffer_pages();
-	long correction;
-
-	correction = (100 * 4 * buffer_pages) / vm_total_pages;
-
-	if (correction < 100) {
-		dirty_background_ratio *= correction;
-		dirty_background_ratio /= 100;
-		vm_dirty_ratio *= correction;
-		vm_dirty_ratio /= 100;
-
-		if (dirty_background_ratio <= 0)
-			dirty_background_ratio = 1;
-		if (vm_dirty_ratio <= 0)
-			vm_dirty_ratio = 1;
-	}
 	mod_timer(&wb_timer, jiffies + dirty_writeback_interval);
 	writeback_set_ratelimit();
 	register_cpu_notifier(&ratelimit_nb);
@@ -845,38 +840,6 @@ int set_page_dirty_lock(struct page *page)
 EXPORT_SYMBOL(set_page_dirty_lock);
 
 /*
- * Clear a page's dirty flag, while caring for dirty memory accounting. 
- * Returns true if the page was previously dirty.
- */
-int test_clear_page_dirty(struct page *page)
-{
-	struct address_space *mapping = page_mapping(page);
-	unsigned long flags;
-
-	if (!mapping)
-		return TestClearPageDirty(page);
-
-	write_lock_irqsave(&mapping->tree_lock, flags);
-	if (TestClearPageDirty(page)) {
-		radix_tree_tag_clear(&mapping->page_tree,
-				page_index(page), PAGECACHE_TAG_DIRTY);
-		write_unlock_irqrestore(&mapping->tree_lock, flags);
-		/*
-		 * We can continue to use `mapping' here because the
-		 * page is locked, which pins the address_space
-		 */
-		if (mapping_cap_account_dirty(mapping)) {
-			page_mkclean(page);
-			dec_zone_page_state(page, NR_FILE_DIRTY);
-		}
-		return 1;
-	}
-	write_unlock_irqrestore(&mapping->tree_lock, flags);
-	return 0;
-}
-EXPORT_SYMBOL(test_clear_page_dirty);
-
-/*
  * Clear a page's dirty flag, while caring for dirty memory accounting.
  * Returns true if the page was previously dirty.
  *
@@ -894,17 +857,46 @@ int clear_page_dirty_for_io(struct page *page)
 {
 	struct address_space *mapping = page_mapping(page);
 
-	if (!mapping)
-		return TestClearPageDirty(page);
-
-	if (TestClearPageDirty(page)) {
-		if (mapping_cap_account_dirty(mapping)) {
-			page_mkclean(page);
+	if (mapping && mapping_cap_account_dirty(mapping)) {
+		/*
+		 * Yes, Virginia, this is indeed insane.
+		 *
+		 * We use this sequence to make sure that
+		 *  (a) we account for dirty stats properly
+		 *  (b) we tell the low-level filesystem to
+		 *      mark the whole page dirty if it was
+		 *      dirty in a pagetable. Only to then
+		 *  (c) clean the page again and return 1 to
+		 *      cause the writeback.
+		 *
+		 * This way we avoid all nasty races with the
+		 * dirty bit in multiple places and clearing
+		 * them concurrently from different threads.
+		 *
+		 * Note! Normally the "set_page_dirty(page)"
+		 * has no effect on the actual dirty bit - since
+		 * that will already usually be set. But we
+		 * need the side effects, and it can help us
+		 * avoid races.
+		 *
+		 * We basically use the page "master dirty bit"
+		 * as a serialization point for all the different
+		 * threads doing their things.
+		 *
+		 * FIXME! We still have a race here: if somebody
+		 * adds the page back to the page tables in
+		 * between the "page_mkclean()" and the "TestClearPageDirty()",
+		 * we might have it mapped without the dirty bit set.
+		 */
+		if (page_mkclean(page))
+			set_page_dirty(page);
+		if (TestClearPageDirty(page)) {
 			dec_zone_page_state(page, NR_FILE_DIRTY);
+			return 1;
 		}
-		return 1;
+		return 0;
 	}
-	return 0;
+	return TestClearPageDirty(page);
 }
 EXPORT_SYMBOL(clear_page_dirty_for_io);