On Wed, 27 Feb 2008 15:32:52 -0800 (PST) Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com> wrote:

quoted text
> On Tue, 19 Feb 2008, Mathieu Desnoyers wrote:
> 
> > incrementing the variable with a "++" when interrupts are not disabled.
> > It's not an atomic add and it's racy. The code within stat() does
> > exactly this.
> 
> Yes but that is only for used for statistics which can be racy. Note that 
> the VM event statistics also can be racy.
> 

Doing ++ on a u32 _is_ atomic wrt interrupts on x86 and probably lots of
other architectures, so we're OK using unsigned there.  But on some other
architectures ++ on u32 is not atomic wrt interrutps, so they should use
atomic_t or some other arch-specific mechanism.

And guess what?  It's already all been done: local_t.
--
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/