Messages in this thread | | | Date | Wed, 11 Dec 2002 16:50:59 -0800 | From | Andrew Morton <> | Subject | Re: Status new-modules + 802.11b/IrDA |
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Rusty Russell wrote: > > In message <20021211174305.GB11264@bougret.hpl.hp.com> you write: > > On Wed, Dec 11, 2002 at 07:34:53PM +1100, Rusty Russell wrote: > > > > o removal of airo_cs : "Uninitialised timer!/nThis is a > > > > warning. Your computer is OK". Call trace on demand. Also, the module > > > > airo not removed (probably due to problem with airo_cs). > > > > > > That, in itself, should be harmless. > > > > Yes, but this is new and I don't really like it. I suspect > > something is wrong in the Pcmcia code itself. Last I tried was 2.5.46 > > and I see some suspicious init_timer() added where I would not expect, > > and some missing where they would be needed. > > Hum... Who is in charge ? > > Well, Andrew Morton made the change that required timers to be > initialized, and the check which locates ones which are not. As to > who is responsible for airo_cs, I'm guessing Ben Reed, as author.
wakes up.
> > I personally believe the timer thingy is important and cause > > of problems. > > I disagree: the warning is supposed to silently fix it up. >
yes. It goes like this:
1: The new super-scalable SMP timers code had a locking problem which made 8-ways go oops. 2: The fix was to add a spinlock to struct timer_list. 3: spinlocks need to be initialised. 3a: struct timer_list needs to be initialised.
This is a problem, because it has traditionally been the case that an all-zeroes struct timer_list is "initialised". That is no longer the case. All timers must now be prepared with init_timer() or TIMER_INITIALIZER()
So debugging code was added to the timer layer to detect when someone passes an uninitialised timer into the core timer functions. That debug code generates a warning, a backtrace and then initialises the timer for you, so things run happily.
I did an audit and fixed up probably a hundred or so uninitialised timers, but there will be a few leftovers.
The intent is that people will report these leftovers, they get fixed up and then one day we pull out the debug code. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
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