Re: [RFC][PATCH] PM: Introduce new top level suspend and hibernation callbacks (rev. 3)

[Rafael J. Wysocki]

On Wednesday, 26 of March 2008, Alan Stern wrote:
> On Tue, 25 Mar 2008, Rafael J. Wysocki wrote:
> 
> > > I just thought of another problem.  At the point where
> > > local_irq_disable() is called, in between device_suspend() and
> > > device_power_down(), it is possible in a preemptible kernel that
> > > another task is holding dpm_list_mtx and is in the middle of updating
> > > the list pointers.  This would mess up the traversal in
> > > device_power_down().
> > > 
> > > I'm not sure about the best way to prevent this.  Is it legal to call
> > > unlock_mutex() while interrupts or preemption are disabled?
> > 
> > Well, I think it is, but I'm not sure how that can help.
> > 
> > To prevent the race from happening, we can lock dpm_list_mtx before switching
> > interrupts off in kernel/power/main.c:suspend_enter() and analogously in
> > kernel/power/disk.c .
> 
> That's right.  And once interrupts are turned off you should unlock 
> dpm_list_mtx again, in case a noirq method wants to unregister a 
> device.

Why would a noirq method want to do that?  IMO, it's not a big deal if noirq
methods are not allowed to unregister devices.

> Hence my question: Is it legal to call unlock_mutex() while interrupts are
> disabled? 

Well, I suspect that will confuse lockdep quite a bit.  Otherwise, I don't see
a problem with it (it's just changing the value of a shared variable after
all).

Thanks,
Rafael
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