On Tue, Jan 29, 2008 at 02:59:14PM +0100, Andrea Arcangeli wrote:
quoted text
> The down_write is garbage. The caller should put it around
> mmu_notifier_register if something. The same way the caller should
> call synchronize_rcu after mmu_notifier_register if it needs
> synchronous behavior from the notifiers. The default version of
> mmu_notifier_register shouldn't be cluttered with unnecessary locking.

Ooops my spinlock was gone from the notifier head.... so the above
comment is wrong sorry! I thought down_write was needed to serialize
against some _external_ event, not to serialize the list updates in
place of my explicit lock. The critical section is so small that a
semaphore is the wrong locking choice, that's why I assumed it was for
an external event. Anyway RCU won't be optimal for a huge flood of
register/unregister, I agree the down_write shouldn't create much
contention and it saves 4 bytes from each mm_struct, and we can always
change it to a proper spinlock later if needed.
--
unsubscribe notice
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/