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SubjectRe: [PATCH 0/4] RCU: various merge candidates
On Mon, Aug 28, 2006 at 12:40:58PM -0700, Andrew Morton wrote:
> On Tue, 29 Aug 2006 00:46:42 +0530
> Dipankar Sarma <dipankar@in.ibm.com> wrote:
>
> > srcu (sleepable rcu) patches independent of the core RCU implementation
> > changes in the patchset. You can queue these up either before
> > or after srcu.
> >
> > ...
> >
> > rcutorture fix patches independent of rcu implementation changes
> > in this patchset.
>
> So this patchset is largely orthogonal to the presently-queued stuff?
>
> > >
> > > Now what?
> >
> > Heh. I can always re-submit against -mm after I wait for a day or two
> > for comments :)
>
> That would be good, thanks. We were seriously considering merging all the
> SRCU stuff for 2.6.18, because
> cpufreq-make-the-transition_notifier-chain-use-srcu.patch fixes a cpufreq
> down()-in-irq-disabled warning at suspend time.
>
> But that's a lot of new stuff just to fix a warning about something which
> won't actually cause any misbehaviour. We could just as well do
>
> if (irqs_disabled())
> down_read_trylock(...); /* suspend */
> else
> down_read(...);
>
> in cpufreq to temporarily shut the thing up.

I re-reviewed SRCU and found no issues. So I am OK with it going upstream
if it is useful.

I do have a comment patch below to flag an "attractive nuisance".
Several people have asked about moving the final synchronize_sched()
out of the critical section, but this turns out to be not just scary,
but actually unsafe. ;-)

Again, this patch just adds verbiage to an existing comment.

Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@us.ibm.com>
---

diff -urpNa -X dontdiff linux-2.6.18-rc2-mm1/kernel/srcu.c linux-2.6.18-rc2-mm1-srcu-comment/kernel/srcu.c
--- linux-2.6.18-rc2-mm1/kernel/srcu.c 2006-08-05 16:30:19.000000000 -0700
+++ linux-2.6.18-rc2-mm1-srcu-comment/kernel/srcu.c 2006-08-29 17:29:30.000000000 -0700
@@ -212,6 +212,25 @@ void synchronize_srcu(struct srcu_struct
* More importantly, it also forces the corresponding SRCU read-side
* critical sections to have also completed, and the corresponding
* references to SRCU-protected data items to be dropped.
+ *
+ * Note:
+ *
+ * Despite what you might think at first glance, the
+ * preceding synchronize_sched() -must- be within the
+ * critical section ended by the following mutex_unlock().
+ * Otherwise, a task taking the early exit can race
+ * with a srcu_read_unlock(), which might have executed
+ * just before the preceding srcu_readers_active() check,
+ * and whose CPU might have reordered the srcu_read_unlock()
+ * with the preceding critical section. In this case, there
+ * is nothing preventing the synchronize_sched() task that is
+ * taking the early exit from freeing a data structure that
+ * is still being referenced (out of order) by the task
+ * doing the srcu_read_unlock().
+ *
+ * Alternatively, the comparison with "2" on the early exit
+ * could be changed to "3", but this increases synchronize_srcu()
+ * latency for bulk loads. So the current code is preferred.
*/

mutex_unlock(&sp->mutex);
-
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