Re: 2.6.0-test7-mm1

From: Andrew Morton
Date: Wed Oct 15 2003 - 12:52:43 EST


Ben Collins <bcollins@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> > highlevel_add_host() does read_lock() and then proceeds to do things like
> > starting kernel threads under that lock. The locking is pretty broken
> > in there :(
>
> No, highlevel_add_host() itself doesn't start any threads. But it does
> pass around data that needs to be locked from changes, and one of the
> handlers happens to start a thread, and other things allocate memory
> (such as this case).
>
> It's ugly, and I've been trying to clean it up. This case can be fixed
> quickly with a simple check in hpsb_create_hostinfo() to pass GFP_ATOMIC
> to kmalloc.

nodemgr_add_host() looks like the hard one. Maybe make hl_drivers_lock a
sleeping lock?

> My problem right now, is I don't use any architectures that support
> preempt, so I don't see a lot of these problems, like I catch with
> CONFIG_SMP.

Anton had a ppc64 patch which implemented the preempt_count beancounting
without actually implementing premption. So might_sleep() does the right
thing.

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