slab: Explain why SLAB_TYPESAFE_BY_RCU reference before locking

It is not obvious to the casual user why it is absolutely necessary to
acquire a reference to a SLAB_TYPESAFE_BY_RCU structure before acquiring
a lock in that structure.  Therefore, add a comment explaining this point.

[ paulmck: Apply Vlastimil Babka feedback. ]

Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@kernel.org>
Cc: Christoph Lameter <cl@linux.com>
Cc: Pekka Enberg <penberg@kernel.org>
Cc: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com>
Cc: Joonsoo Kim <iamjoonsoo.kim@lge.com>
Cc: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: Roman Gushchin <roman.gushchin@linux.dev>
Cc: Hyeonggon Yoo <42.hyeyoo@gmail.com>
Cc: <linux-mm@kvack.org>
Acked-by: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz>

diff --git a/include/linux/slab.h b/include/linux/slab.h
index 90877fcde70bd615ab059b57f7ee44a31a67d6f7..487418c7ea8cdc036eed184f8b3db160e4814d1a 100644 (file)
--- a/include/linux/slab.h
+++ b/include/linux/slab.h
@@ -76,6 +76,17 @@
  * rcu_read_lock before reading the address, then rcu_read_unlock after
  * taking the spinlock within the structure expected at that address.
  *
+ * Note that it is not possible to acquire a lock within a structure
+ * allocated with SLAB_TYPESAFE_BY_RCU without first acquiring a reference
+ * as described above.  The reason is that SLAB_TYPESAFE_BY_RCU pages
+ * are not zeroed before being given to the slab, which means that any
+ * locks must be initialized after each and every kmem_struct_alloc().
+ * Alternatively, make the ctor passed to kmem_cache_create() initialize
+ * the locks at page-allocation time, as is done in __i915_request_ctor(),
+ * sighand_ctor(), and anon_vma_ctor().  Such a ctor permits readers
+ * to safely acquire those ctor-initialized locks under rcu_read_lock()
+ * protection.
+ *
  * Note that SLAB_TYPESAFE_BY_RCU was originally named SLAB_DESTROY_BY_RCU.
  */
 /* Defer freeing slabs to RCU */