slab: document SLAB_DESTROY_BY_RCU

Explain this SLAB_DESTROY_BY_RCU thing...

[[e-mail]: add a pointer to comment in mm/slab.c]
Signed-off-by: Peter Zijlstra <[e-mail]>
Acked-by: Jens Axboe <[e-mail]>
Acked-by: Paul E. McKenney <[e-mail]>
Acked-by: Christoph Lameter <[e-mail]>
Signed-off-by: Hugh Dickins <[e-mail]>
Signed-off-by: Pekka Enberg <[e-mail]>

include/linux/slab.h

···
 #define SLAB_CACHE_DMA		0x00004000UL	/* Use GFP_DMA memory */
 #define SLAB_STORE_USER		0x00010000UL	/* DEBUG: Store the last owner for bug hunting */
 #define SLAB_PANIC		0x00040000UL	/* Panic if kmem_cache_create() fails */
+/*
+ * SLAB_DESTROY_BY_RCU - **WARNING** READ THIS!
+ *
+ * This delays freeing the SLAB page by a grace period, it does _NOT_
+ * delay object freeing. This means that if you do kmem_cache_free()
+ * that memory location is free to be reused at any time. Thus it may
+ * be possible to see another object there in the same RCU grace period.
+ *
+ * This feature only ensures the memory location backing the object
+ * stays valid, the trick to using this is relying on an independent
+ * object validation pass. Something like:
+ *
+ *  rcu_read_lock()
+ * again:
+ *  obj = lockless_lookup(key);
+ *  if (obj) {
+ *    if (!try_get_ref(obj)) // might fail for free objects
+ *      goto again;
+ *
+ *    if (obj->key != key) { // not the object we expected
+ *      put_ref(obj);
+ *      goto again;
+ *    }
+ *  }
+ *  rcu_read_unlock();
+ *
+ * See also the comment on struct slab_rcu in mm/slab.c.
+ */
 #define SLAB_DESTROY_BY_RCU	0x00080000UL	/* Defer freeing slabs to RCU */
 #define SLAB_MEM_SPREAD		0x00100000UL	/* Spread some memory over cpuset */
 #define SLAB_TRACE		0x00200000UL	/* Trace allocations and frees */