From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: David Mosberger Date: Mon, 29 Jul 2002 21:48:39 +0000 Subject: RE: [Linux-ia64] Linux kernel deadlock caused by spinlock bug Message-Id: List-Id: References: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: linux-ia64@vger.kernel.org >>>>> On Mon, 29 Jul 2002 16:29:09 -0500, "Van Maren, Kevin" said: Van> Yes, but that isn't the point: unless you eliminate all rw Van> locks, it is conceptually possible to cause a kernel deadlock Van> by forcing contention on the locks you didn't remove, if the Van> user can force the kernel to acquire a reader lock and if Van> something else needs to acquire the writer lock. Correctness Van> is the issue, not performance. I agree with Kevin here. There must be some argument as to why readers cannot indefinitely lock out a writer. A probabilistic argument is fine, but just saying "contention doesn't happen" certainly isn't good enough. --david