SLUB: Avoid touching page struct when freeing to per cpu slab Instead of checking for SlabDebug which requires access the page struct contents simply check the per cpu freepointer if its not NULL. It can only be not NULL if !SlabDebug. This means we will not free to the cpu slab if the per cpu list is empty. In that case it is likely that the cpu slab is soon being retired anyways. Not freeing to an empty freelist is also required to avoid races in the cmpxchg alloc/free version. Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter --- mm/slub.c | 11 +++++++++-- 1 file changed, 9 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) Index: linux-2.6.22-rc6-mm1/mm/slub.c =================================================================== --- linux-2.6.22-rc6-mm1.orig/mm/slub.c 2007-07-05 19:05:29.000000000 -0700 +++ linux-2.6.22-rc6-mm1/mm/slub.c 2007-07-05 19:05:33.000000000 -0700 @@ -1525,6 +1531,7 @@ new_slab: } return NULL; debug: + c->freelist = NULL; object = c->page->freelist; if (!alloc_debug_processing(s, c->page, object, addr)) goto another_slab; @@ -1663,7 +1670,7 @@ static void __always_inline slab_free(st local_irq_save(flags); c = get_cpu_slab(s, smp_processor_id()); - if (likely(page == c->page && !SlabDebug(page))) { + if (likely(page == c->page && c->freelist)) { object[c->offset] = c->freelist; c->freelist = object; } else