All of lore.kernel.org
 help / color / mirror / Atom feed
From: Sam Ravnborg <sam@ravnborg.org>
To: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
Cc: LKML <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
	Andi Kleen <andi@firstfloor.org>,
	Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>,
	Al Viro <viro@ZenIV.linux.org.uk>,
	Oleg Nesterov <oleg@redhat.com>,
	bfields@fieldses.org, xfs-masters@oss.sgi.com
Subject: Re: RFC: Fix f_flags races without the BKL
Date: Mon, 29 Dec 2008 12:57:06 +0100	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20081229115706.GA955@uranus.ravnborg.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20081229041352.6bbdf57c@tpl>

On Mon, Dec 29, 2008 at 04:13:52AM -0700, Jonathan Corbet wrote:
> Accesses to the f_flags field have always involved a read-modify-write
> operation, and have always been racy in the absence of the BKL.  The recent
> BKL-removal work made this problem worse, but it has been there for a very
> long time.  The race is quite small, and, arguably, has never affected
> anybody, but it's still worth fixing.
> 
> After pondering for a while, I couldn't come up with anything better than a
> global file->f_flags mutex.  There's no point in bloating struct file with
> a mutex just for this purpose; it's hard to imagine that there will be any
> real contention for this lock.
Rather than open coded mutex how about adding a few helpers to
set and clear the flags and hide locking there?

Not that your patch looks invasive..

	Sam

  reply	other threads:[~2008-12-29 11:55 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 24+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2008-12-29 11:13 RFC: Fix f_flags races without the BKL Jonathan Corbet
2008-12-29 11:57 ` Sam Ravnborg [this message]
2008-12-30 12:49   ` Jonathan Corbet
2008-12-29 12:41 ` Oleg Nesterov
2008-12-29 15:27   ` Andi Kleen
2008-12-30 12:59     ` Jonathan Corbet
2008-12-30 13:04       ` [xfs-masters] " Christoph Hellwig
2008-12-30 13:37         ` Andi Kleen
2008-12-30 14:48           ` Christoph Hellwig
2008-12-31  9:52             ` Jonathan Corbet
2008-12-30 14:55       ` Andi Kleen
2009-01-08 23:28   ` Jonathan Corbet
2009-01-09 10:08     ` Oleg Nesterov
2009-01-09 13:18       ` Jonathan Corbet
2009-01-09 14:03         ` Oleg Nesterov
2009-01-09 15:09         ` Andi Kleen
2008-12-29 12:50 ` [xfs-masters] " Christoph Hellwig
2008-12-29 15:15   ` Andi Kleen
2009-01-02 18:29     ` Al Viro
2009-01-02 18:27   ` Al Viro
2009-01-02 18:42 ` Al Viro
2009-01-02 19:09   ` Oleg Nesterov
2009-01-02 19:54     ` Al Viro
2009-01-03 16:45       ` Oleg Nesterov

Reply instructions:

You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:

* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
  and reply-to-all from there: mbox

  Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style

* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
  switches of git-send-email(1):

  git send-email \
    --in-reply-to=20081229115706.GA955@uranus.ravnborg.org \
    --to=sam@ravnborg.org \
    --cc=alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk \
    --cc=andi@firstfloor.org \
    --cc=bfields@fieldses.org \
    --cc=corbet@lwn.net \
    --cc=linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org \
    --cc=oleg@redhat.com \
    --cc=viro@ZenIV.linux.org.uk \
    --cc=xfs-masters@oss.sgi.com \
    /path/to/YOUR_REPLY

  https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html

* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
  via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line before the message body.
This is an external index of several public inboxes,
see mirroring instructions on how to clone and mirror
all data and code used by this external index.