Messages in this thread | | | Date | Sat, 14 Nov 1998 02:08:25 +1100 | From | Richard Gooch <> | Subject | global kernel lock |
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Hi, all. I happened to be looking at some system calls (read(2) for example) and I noticed that the global kernel lock is still being grabbed. Looking further, I noticed that a context switch should release the lock, so one process blocked reading a slow device should not prevent another process from reading another device.
However, it looks like with an SMP machine that two processes can't concurrently read, say, a regular file and a fast (non-sleeping) device, since only one process can own the global kernel lock. I was a little surprised at this, since I thought we'd pretty much gotten rid of the global kernel lock in 2.1.x. Although, I have to admit I haven't been paying close attention.
I have two simple questions:
- is my reading of the code correct
- does anyone have removing this on their ToDo for 2.3?
Regards,
Richard....
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