Re: [PATCH v4 1/1] dcache: Translating dentry into pathname withouttaking rename_lock

From: Waiman Long
Date: Mon Sep 09 2013 - 13:57:08 EST


On 09/09/2013 01:45 PM, Linus Torvalds wrote:
On Mon, Sep 9, 2013 at 10:29 AM, Al Viro<viro@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I'm not sure I like mixing rcu_read_lock() into that - d_path() and friends
can do that themselves just fine (it needs to be taken when seq is even),
and e.g. d_walk() doesn't need it at all. Other than that, I'm OK with
this variant.
Hmm.. I think you need the RCU read lock even when you get the write_seqlock().

Yes, getting the seqlock for write implies that you get a spinlock and
in many normal circumstances that basically is equvalent to being
rcu-locked, but afaik in some configurations that is *not* sufficient
protection against an RCU grace period on another CPU. You need to do
a real rcu_read_lock that increments that whole rcu_read_lock_nesting
level, which a spinlock won't do.

And while the rename sequence lock protects against _renames_, it does
not protect against just plain dentries getting free'd under memory
pressure.

So I think the RCU-readlockness really needs to be independent of the
sequence lock.

Linus

Yes, you are right. It will be safer to take rcu_read_lock() even if we are taking the rename_lock. It wasn't needed before as d_lock was taken. Will update the patch to take rcu_read_lock() out to reflect that.

Regards,
Longman
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