Re: [patch] convert aio event reap to use atomic-op instead of spin_lock

From: Zach Brown
Date: Wed Apr 11 2007 - 15:53:35 EST


> > I kept on getting requests from application developers who want that
> > feature. My initial patch was dated back May 2004.
>
> The right way to do it involves synchronization between the kernel side
> io_getevents() and the userspace code pulling events out of the ring.
> Alan Cox suggested embedding a futex in the shared memory region, but I
> don't think anyone ever implemented that.

Yeah, I like the idea of futexes.

I'm worried that virtual aliasing spells doom for the current
home-brewed serialization that fs/aio.c is doing with the shared ring
head/tail accesses. Am I worrying about nothing here?

> > I will look into this aside from this patch.
>
> That's probably the case. Also, any changes in this area *must* correctly
> update the compat/incompat feature flags in the ring buffer header. That
> has been missed in the past...

Do you know of anyone using the current ring info ABI?

The *only* user I know of is the check of ctx->magic in libaio.

- z
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