Re: Locking comment on shrink_caches()

[Benjamin LaHaise]

On Tue, Sep 25, 2001 at 01:29:05PM -0700, David S. Miller wrote:
> Well, there are two things happing in that patch.  Per-hash chain
> locks for the page cache itself, and the lock added to the address
> space for that page list.

Last time I looked, those patches made the already ugly vm locking 
even worse.  I'd rather try to use some of the rcu techniques for 
page cache lookup, and per-page locking for page cache removal 
which will lead to *cleaner* code as well as a much more scalable 
kernel.

Keep in mind that just because a lock is on someone's hitlist doesn't 
mean that it is for the right reasons.  Look at the io_request_lock 
that is held around the bounce buffer copies in the scsi midlayer.  
*shudder*

		-ben