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-rw-r--r--Documentation/core-api/pin_user_pages.rst18
1 files changed, 18 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/core-api/pin_user_pages.rst b/Documentation/core-api/pin_user_pages.rst
index 4675b04e8829..6068266dd303 100644
--- a/Documentation/core-api/pin_user_pages.rst
+++ b/Documentation/core-api/pin_user_pages.rst
@@ -171,6 +171,24 @@ If only struct page data (as opposed to the actual memory contents that a page
is tracking) is affected, then normal GUP calls are sufficient, and neither flag
needs to be set.
+CASE 5: Pinning in order to write to the data within the page
+-------------------------------------------------------------
+Even though neither DMA nor Direct IO is involved, just a simple case of "pin,
+write to a page's data, unpin" can cause a problem. Case 5 may be considered a
+superset of Case 1, plus Case 2, plus anything that invokes that pattern. In
+other words, if the code is neither Case 1 nor Case 2, it may still require
+FOLL_PIN, for patterns like this:
+
+Correct (uses FOLL_PIN calls):
+ pin_user_pages()
+ write to the data within the pages
+ unpin_user_pages()
+
+INCORRECT (uses FOLL_GET calls):
+ get_user_pages()
+ write to the data within the pages
+ put_page()
+
page_maybe_dma_pinned(): the whole point of pinning
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