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From: Dipankar Sarma <dipankar@in.ibm.com>
To: Frank van Maarseveen <frankvm@frankvm.com>
Cc: Pablo Fernandez <pablo.ferlop@gmail.com>, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: max_fd
Date: Sat, 24 Sep 2005 00:16:15 +0530	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20050923184615.GB4573@in.ibm.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20050923184056.GA2024@janus>

On Fri, Sep 23, 2005 at 08:40:56PM +0200, Frank van Maarseveen wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 23, 2005 at 10:56:53PM +0530, Dipankar Sarma wrote:
> > 
> > Well, the main reason is that if that code is somehow copied
> > by to a lock-free critical section, it could cause problems.
> > If you dereference ->fdt multiple times in a lock-free
> > section, you could see two different pointers due to
> > a concurrent update.
> 
> thanks for the explanation. This raises a lot of other questions. What
> if max_fds is updated by RCU right after obtaining it...

If you are updating it, you hold the lock. That way you can't
be racing with another update. Secondly, changing max_fds
would require allocating a new fdtable structure and
updating ->fdt to point to the new structure, all under
the files_struct lock. The lock-free readers may see the
older fdtable which is kept around until the RCU grace
period is over. That makes it safe.

Thanks
Dipankar

      reply	other threads:[~2005-09-23 18:52 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 6+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2005-09-23 12:37 max_fd Pablo Fernandez
2005-09-23 15:55 ` max_fd Dipankar Sarma
2005-09-23 17:03   ` max_fd Frank van Maarseveen
2005-09-23 17:26     ` max_fd Dipankar Sarma
2005-09-23 18:40       ` max_fd Frank van Maarseveen
2005-09-23 18:46         ` Dipankar Sarma [this message]

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