Re: bkl cleanup in do_sysctl

Roland Dreier
2004-08-10T19:18:58Z

Lee> Someone once suggested that newbies who show up on LKML
Lee> wanting to learn kernel hacking should be assigned to find
Lee> one use of the BKL and replace it with proper locking.

Unfortunately most of the remaining BKL uses seem to be very subtle.
Removing lock_kernel() correctly requires a deep understanding of the
global locking semantics and may be very invasive. In the end it's
also hard to be sure bugs haven't been introduced.

Lee> For example reiserfs uses the BKL for all write locking (!),
Lee> but it probably would not be too hard to fix, because you can
Lee> just look at another filesystem that has proper locking.

Fixing up a filesystem's write locking doesn't sound like a very good
newbie project to me.

- R.