Olaf Dietsche wrote:
>
> Andrew Morton <akpm@zip.com.au> writes:
>
> > The get_request fairness patch exposed a livelock
> > in the buffer layer. write_unlocked_buffers() will
> > not terminate while other tasks are generating write traffic.
>
> The subject says it: what is a livelock? How is it different
> from a deadlock?
>
http://www.huis.hiroshima-u.ac.jp/jargon/LexiconEntries/Livelock.html
livelock
/li:v'lok/ n. A situation in which some critical stage of a task is
unable to finish because its clients perpetually create more work
for it to do after they have been serviced but before it can clear its
queue. Differs from {deadlock} in that the process is not blocked or
waiting for anything, but has a virtually infinite amount of work to
do and can never catch up.
This exactly describes the sync problem. But we also use the
term `livelock' to describe one of the Linux VM's favourite
failure modes: madly spinning on page lists and not finding
any useful work to do. Which is slightly different.
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Feb 15 2002 - 21:00:51 EST