Re: How is Code in do_sys_settimeofday() safe in case of SMP andNest Kernel Path?

[Christoph Lameter]

On Fri, 29 Sep 2006, Dong Feng wrote:

> For my understanding, an assignment between structs should be a
> bit-wise copy. Such operation is not atomic, so it can not be supposed

Byte or Machine word yes.

> SMP-safe. And the subsequent test-and-assign operation on firsttime is
> not atomic, either.

No its not atomic on its own. Correct.
 
> If the comments mean the subsequent code is SMP-safe and can prevent
> nest-kernel-path, how does it achieves that?

It relies on locking outside of do_sys_settimeofday(). Seems that this 
indicates locking is to be performed by the arch before calling 
do_sys_settimeofday. Looks suspicious to me. Check that this function is 
always called with the same lock.
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