Re: [RFC,PATCH 14/14] utrace core

From: Peter Zijlstra
Date: Tue Dec 08 2009 - 10:29:39 EST


On Tue, 2009-12-08 at 16:04 +0100, Oleg Nesterov wrote:
> > > > > + /*
> > > > > + * In theory spin_lock() doesn't imply rcu_read_lock().
> > > > > + * Once we clear ->utrace_flags this task_struct can go away
> > > > > + * because tracehook_prepare_release_task() path does not take
> > > > > + * utrace->lock when ->utrace_flags == 0.
> > > > > + */
> > > > > + rcu_read_lock();
> > > > > + task->utrace_flags = flags;
> > > > > + spin_unlock(&utrace->lock);
> > > > > + rcu_read_unlock();
> > > >
> > > > yuck!
> > > >
> > > > why not simply keep a task reference over the utrace_reset call?
> > >
> > > Yes, we could use get_task_struct() instead. Not sure this would
> > > be more clean, though.
> >
> > For one it would allow getting rid of that insane assymetric locking.
>
> Well, this is subjective, but I don't agree that
>
> get_task_struct(task);
> task->utrace_flags = flags;
> spin_unlock(&utrace->lock);
> put_task_struct(task);
>
> looks better.

No, what I mean by assymetric locking is that utrace_reset() and
utrace_reap() drop the utrace->lock where their caller acquired it,
resulting in non-obvious like:

utrace_control()
{

...
spin_lock(&utrace->lock);

...

if (reset)
utrace_reset(utrace);
else
spin_unlock(&utrace->lock);
}

If you take a task ref you can write the much saner:

utrace_control()
{
...
spin_lock(&utrace->lock);
...
if (reset)
utrace_reset(utrace);

spin_unlock(&utrace->lock);
}



--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/