[PATCH] [0/11] SYSCTL: Use RCU to avoid races with string sysctls

From: Andi Kleen
Date: Sun Dec 20 2009 - 20:22:06 EST



With BKL-less sysctls most of the writable string sysctls are racy. There
is no locking on the reader side, so a reader could see an inconsistent
string or worse miss the terminating null and walk of beyond it.

This patch kit adds a new "rcu string" variant to avoid these
problems and convers the racy users. One the writer side the strings are
always copied to new memory and the readers use rcu_read_lock()
to get a stable view. For readers who access the string over
sleeps the reader copies the string.

This is all hidden in a new generic "rcu_string" ADT which can be also
used for other purposes.

This finally implements all the letters in RCU, most other users
leave out the 'C'.

I also fixed the zone order list sysctl to use a mutex to avoid
racing with itself.

I left some obscure users in architectures (sparc, mips) alone and audited
all of the others. The sparc reboot_cmd one has references to asm files
which I didn't want to touch and the mips variant seemd just too obscure.

All the others are not racy.

-Andi
--
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/