Re: [Patch v4] rwsem: fix rwsem_is_locked() bugs

From: David Howells
Date: Thu Oct 08 2009 - 06:47:25 EST


Amerigo Wang <amwang@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> rwsem_is_locked() tests ->activity without locks, so we should always
> keep ->activity consistent. However, the code in __rwsem_do_wake()
> breaks this rule, it updates ->activity after _all_ readers waken up,
> this may give some reader a wrong ->activity value, thus cause
> rwsem_is_locked() behaves wrong.
>
> Quote from Andrew:
>
> "
> - we have one or more processes sleeping in down_read(), waiting for access.
>
> - we wake one or more processes up without altering ->activity
>
> - they start to run and they do rwsem_is_locked(). This incorrectly
> returns "false", because the waker process is still crunching away in
> __rwsem_do_wake().
>
> - the waker now alters ->activity, but it was too late.
> "
>
> So we need get a spinlock to protect this. And rwsem_is_locked()
> should not block, thus we use spin_trylock.
>
> Reported-by: Brian Behlendorf <behlendorf1@xxxxxxxx>
> Cc: Ben Woodard <bwoodard@xxxxxxxx>
> Cc: David Howells <dhowells@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Signed-off-by: WANG Cong <amwang@xxxxxxxxxx>

I'd say the comment in __rwsem_do_wake() is unnecessary, but other than
that...

Acked-by: David Howells <dhowells@xxxxxxxxxx>
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