From: Nathan Scott XFS wants to use page->private as a bitmap of uptodate indicators for sub-page-sized blocks (which is one of the things ->provate was intended for). But someone needs to initialise ->private somewhere. best to do it in the page allocator, so the zeroness of a new page's ->private becomes a system-wide thing. mm/page_alloc.c | 1 + 1 files changed, 1 insertion(+) diff -puN mm/page_alloc.c~init_page_private mm/page_alloc.c --- 25/mm/page_alloc.c~init_page_private 2003-08-06 21:51:42.000000000 -0700 +++ 25-akpm/mm/page_alloc.c 2003-08-06 21:52:39.000000000 -0700 @@ -331,6 +331,7 @@ static void prep_new_page(struct page *p page->flags &= ~(1 << PG_uptodate | 1 << PG_error | 1 << PG_referenced | 1 << PG_arch_1 | 1 << PG_checked | 1 << PG_mappedtodisk); + page->private = 0; set_page_refs(page, order); } _