Re: [PATCH for 2.5] preemptible kernel

Andrew Morton
2001-03-21T10:05:13Z

"David S. Miller" wrote:
>
> Keith Owens writes:
> > Or have I missed something?
>
> Nope, it is a fundamental problem with such kernel pre-emption
> schemes. As a result, it would also break our big-reader locks
> (see include/linux/brlock.h).
>
> Basically, anything which uses smp_processor_id() would need to
> be holding some lock so as to not get pre-empted.
>

It's a problem for uniprocessors as well.

Example:

#define current_cpu_data boot_cpu_data
#define pgd_quicklist (current_cpu_data.pgd_quick)

extern __inline__ void free_pgd_fast(pgd_t *pgd)
{
*(unsigned long *)pgd = (unsigned long) pgd_quicklist;
pgd_quicklist = (unsigned long *) pgd;
pgtable_cache_size++;
}

Preemption could corrupt this list.

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