Better late than never, I've at last reviewed the madvise vma merging
going into 2.6.13. Remove a pointless check and fix two little bugs -
a simple test (with /proc/<pid>/maps hacked to show ReadHints) showed
both mismerges in practice: though being madvise, neither was disastrous.
1. Correct placement of the success label in madvise_behavior: as in
mprotect_fixup and mlock_fixup, it is necessary to update vm_flags
when vma_merge succeeds (to handle the exceptional Case 8 noted in
the comments above vma_merge itself).
2. Correct initial value of prev when starting part way into a vma: as
in sys_mprotect and do_mlock, it needs to be set to vma in this case
(vma_merge handles only that minimum of cases shown in its comments).
3. If find_vma_prev sets prev, then the vma it returns is prev->vm_next,
so it's pointless to make that same assignment again in sys_madvise.