lkml.org 
[lkml]   [2008]   [Aug]   [21]   [last100]   RSS Feed
Views: [wrap][no wrap]   [headers]  [forward] 
 
Messages in this thread
/
SubjectRe: [Cbe-oss-dev] powerpc/cell/oprofile: fix mutex locking for spu-oprofile
From
Date
On Thu, 2008-08-21 at 10:14 +0200, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
> On Thursday 21 August 2008, Paul Mackerras wrote:
> > Arnd Bergmann writes:
> >
> > > Paul, any chance we can still get this into 2.6.27?
> >
> > Possibly. We'll need a really good explanation for Linus as to why
> > this is needed (what regression or serious bug this fixes) and why it
> > is late. Can you send me something explaining that?
>
> The patch does not fix a regression, the spu-oprofile code basically never
> worked. With the current code in Linux, samples in the profile buffer
> can get corrupted because reader and writer to that buffer use different
> locks for accessing it.

Actually for me it worked[1] a reasonable amount of the time, enough to
be useful. So the spu-oprofile code has always been broken in this way,
but it's not always fatal. So the patch doesn't fix a regression, but it
fixes a serious user-visible bug, which makes it legit rc4 material
IMHO.

[1] that was late last year, so possibly a kernel or two ago.

cheers

--
Michael Ellerman
OzLabs, IBM Australia Development Lab

wwweb: http://michael.ellerman.id.au
phone: +61 2 6212 1183 (tie line 70 21183)

We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors,
we borrow it from our children. - S.M.A.R.T Person
[unhandled content-type:application/pgp-signature]
\
 
 \ /
  Last update: 2008-08-21 12:23    [W:0.093 / U:0.428 seconds]
©2003-2020 Jasper Spaans|hosted at Digital Ocean and TransIP|Read the blog|Advertise on this site