git commit 34feb2c83beb3bdf13535a36770f7e50b47ef299 started using quicklists for freeing page table pages and removed the usage of tlb_remove_page()
And looking at quicklist_free() and quicklist_free_page(), on a NUMA platform, this can potentially free the page before the corresponding TLB caches are flushed. Essentially quicklist free routines are doing something like __quicklist_free() ... if (unlikely(nid != numa_node_id())) { __free_page(page); ... } .... Now this will potentially cause a problem, if a cpu in someother node starts using this page, while the corresponding TLB entries are still alive in the original cpu which is still freeing the page table pages. This violates the guideline documented in http://developer.intel.com/design/processor/applnots/317080.pdf This potentially can cause SW failures and hard to debug issues like http://www.ussg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0205.2/1254.html Can we revert this commit for 2.6.23 and look at this code post 2.6.23? thanks, suresh - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/