2.4.14 + Bug in swap_out.

Eric W. Biederman (ebiederm@xmission.com)
20 Nov 2001 23:01:06 -0700


In swap_out we have the following code:

spin_lock(&mmlist_lock);
mm = swap_mm;
while (mm->swap_address == TASK_SIZE || mm == &init_mm) {
mm->swap_address = 0;
mm = list_entry(mm->mmlist.next, struct mm_struct, mmlist);
if (mm == swap_mm)
goto empty;
swap_mm = mm;
}

/* Make sure the mm doesn't disappear when we drop the lock.. */
atomic_inc(&mm->mm_users);
spin_unlock(&mmlist_lock);

nr_pages = swap_out_mm(mm, nr_pages, &counter, classzone);

mmput(mm);

And looking in fork.c mmput under with right circumstances becomes.
kmem_cache_free(mm_cachep, (mm)))

So it appears that there is nothing that keeps the mm_struct that
swap_mm points to as being valid.

I guess the easy fix would be to increment the count on swap_mm,
and then do an mmput we assign something else to the value of swap_mm. But
I don't know if that is what we want.

Thoughts?

Eric

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