om kernel_thread() then look up its task_struct. a) It assumes that pid recycling takes a "long" time. b) We get a task_struct but no reference was taken on it. The owner of the kswapd and kthread task_struct*'s must assume that the new thread won't exit unexpectedly. Because if it does, they're left holding dead memory and any attempt to control or stop that task will crash. Cc: Christoph Hellwig Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds 4+OB™