Re: [PATCH 3/4] relayfs for 2.6.10: locking/lockless implementation

[Greg KH <greg@kroah.com>]

A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

A: No.
Q: Should I include quotations after my reply?

On Fri, Jan 14, 2005 at 05:57:21PM -0500, Robert Wisniewski wrote:
> Greg,
>      There are a couple variables used throughout relayfs code that could
> be modified at any point "simultaneously" by different processes.  These
> variables were not declared volatile, thus when we modify them we need to
> tell the compiler to refetch from memory as another process could have
> changed out from under the current stream of execution since the last time
> there were accessed in the function.  An alternative would be to mark the
> variables that we care about as volatile.

marking them volatile does not protect across cpus.  Just using a normal
atomic_t will work properly.

> I am not sure how best to make
> that tradeoff (i.e., always forcing a refetch by marking a variable
> volatile or only at points were we know we need to by memory clobbering) or
> on what side the Linux community comes down on.  We certainly would be
> happy to go either way with the relayfs code, i.e., mark them variable and
> used the standard atomic operations.

Just use atomic_t and don't mess with volatile.  See the archives for
why that (volatile) doesn't work like that.

> That explains compare_and_store, atomic_add, and atomic_sub.

No it doesn't, why do your own version of this function with the
barrier() function?

> It does not explain the memory clobbering around the atomic set
> operation, which I'm guessing was there just to be consistent with the
> other operations, and could, I believe, be removed.  Hopefully that
> helps answer the question.  If it doesn't please feel free to ask
> more.  Thanks.

So these can just be removed, and the code changed to use the proper
atomic calls?  If so, please do so.

thanks,

greg k-h