From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1763419AbXGQRXm (ORCPT ); Tue, 17 Jul 2007 13:23:42 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1756426AbXGQRXd (ORCPT ); Tue, 17 Jul 2007 13:23:33 -0400 Received: from netops-testserver-4-out.sgi.com ([192.48.171.29]:53953 "EHLO relay.sgi.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-FAIL) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1755743AbXGQRXc (ORCPT ); Tue, 17 Jul 2007 13:23:32 -0400 Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2007 10:23:27 -0700 From: Paul Jackson To: "Paul (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?=5F=5F=5F=5F=5F=5F?=) Menage" Cc: balbir@linux.vnet.ibm.com, dhaval@linux.vnet.ibm.com, xemul@sw.ru, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, containers@lists.osdl.org, akpm@linux-foundation.org Subject: Re: Containers: css_put() dilemma Message-Id: <20070717102327.dc402025.pj@sgi.com> In-Reply-To: <6599ad830707170849v11fe8cecs6d172cd38d247e09@mail.gmail.com> References: <469BBE00.8000709@linux.vnet.ibm.com> <6599ad830707161203o7f148c75p52e77d4be3ace487@mail.gmail.com> <469C2792.6050009@linux.vnet.ibm.com> <6599ad830707161935n69776f1t98292fc9990f4766@mail.gmail.com> <20070717070031.GA22410@linux.vnet.ibm.com> <6599ad830707170018p180cb7dfr53e609fd0b186e30@mail.gmail.com> <469C99D1.7090807@linux.vnet.ibm.com> <6599ad830707170849v11fe8cecs6d172cd38d247e09@mail.gmail.com> Organization: SGI X-Mailer: Sylpheed version 2.2.4 (GTK+ 2.8.3; i686-pc-linux-gnu) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org > Because as soon as you do the atomic_dec_and_test() on css->refcnt and > the refcnt hits zero, then theoretically someone other thread (that > already holds container_mutex) could check that the refcount is zero > and free the container structure. Not just theory ... I've debugged crashes from live customer systems that were basically this race. -- I won't rest till it's the best ... Programmer, Linux Scalability Paul Jackson 1.925.600.0401