Re: simple handling of module removals Re: [OKS] Module removal

From: pmenage@ensim.com
Date: Wed Jul 03 2002 - 19:29:39 EST


In article <0C01A29FBAE24448A792F5C68F5EA47D2B0A8A@nasdaq.ms.ensim.com>,
you write:
>
>Is it just the mod_dec_use_count; return/unload race we're worried about?
>>I'm not clear on why this is hard. I'd think it would be sufficient just
>to
>walk all runnable processes to ensure none has an execution address inside
>the
>module. For smp, an ipi would pick up the current process on each cpu.
>
>At this point the use count must be zero and the module deregistered, so
>all
>we're interested in is that every process that dec'ed the module's use
>count
>has succeeded in executing its way out of the module. If not, we try
>again
>later, or if we're impatient, also bump any processes still inside the
>module
>to the front of the run queue.
>
>I'm sure I must have missed something.
>

Identifying the valid execution address in a stack traceback isn't
possible on many architectures (in particular, i386 without debugging
support enabled) so this wouldn't work if one of the functions had
called into a function outside the module.

On the other hand, if it was made a rule that any code in a module that
might theoretically be running without reference counts wasn't allowed
to call out of the module (or maybe was allowed to call out to a very
specific small set of library functions that were known to the module
system), then something like this might work.

Paul
-
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/



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Jul 07 2002 - 22:00:11 EST