Re: What protects f_pos?

From: tytso@mit.edu
Date: Sat Nov 11 2000 - 18:54:00 EST


   From: David Wragg <dpw@doc.ic.ac.uk>
   Date: 04 Nov 2000 22:16:18 +0000

   Since f_pos of struct file is a loff_t, on 32-bit architectures it
   needs a lock to make accesses atomic (or some more sophisticated form
   of protection). But looking in 2.4.0-test10, there doesn't seem to be
   any such lock.

   The llseek op is called with the Big Kernel Lock, but unlike in 2.2,
   the read and write ops are called without any locks held, and so
   generic_file_{read|write} make unprotected accesses to f_pos (through
   their ppos argument).

This looks like it's a bug to me.... although if you have multiple
threads hitting a file descriptor at the same time, you're pretty much
asking for trouble.

                                                - Ted
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