On 24 Aug 2006 08:45:11 +0200
Andi Kleen <ak@xxxxxxx> wrote:
Edward Falk <efalk@xxxxxxxxxx> writes:
Add spin_lock_string_flags and _raw_spin_lock_flags() to
asm-x86_64/spinlock.h so that _spin_lock_irqsave() has the same
semantics on x86_64 as it does on i386 and does *not* have interrupts
disabled while it is waiting for the lock.
Did it fix anything for you?
It's the rendezvous-via-IPI problem. Suppose we want to capture all CPUs
in an IPI handler (TSC sync, for example).
- CPUa holds read_lock(&tasklist_lock)
- CPUb is spinning in write_lock_irq(&taslist_lock)
- CPUa enters its IPI handler and spins
- CPUb never takes the IPI and we're dead.
Re-enabling interrupts while we spin will prevent that. But I suspect that
if we ever want to implement IPI rendezvous (and cannot use the
stop_machine_run() thing) then we might still have problems. A valid
optimisation (which we use in some places) is:
local_irq_save(flags);
<stuff>
write_lock(lock);