Re: [PATCH 1/2] tracing/function-return-tracer: Make the functionreturn tracer lockless

From: Steven Rostedt
Date: Thu Nov 13 2008 - 12:21:19 EST



On Thu, 13 Nov 2008, Andi Kleen wrote:

> > > local register i
> > > i = index;
> > > write to index'ed array using i
> > > <--------- interrupt here would overwrite data
> > > ...
> > > index = i + 1;
> >
> >
> > Yes in the common case that would be a danger. But here, if an
> > interrupt is raised, it will increment
> > the counter and then decrement it at return time without dropping the
> > cpu. So after the interrupt, the
> > value will remain the same...
>
> The buffer contents will not be necessarily
> the same. See the scenario above. The interrupt would use the
> same i as the current function and would overwrite the
> partially written entry.


So the answer to this is:

i = index++;
barrier();
write to index i (not index);

-- Steve


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