Re: [PATCH/RFC] remove irqs_disabled warning from local_bh_enable

Linus Torvalds
2008-06-17T23:57:35Z

On Tue, 17 Jun 2008, Johannes Berg wrote:
>
> This warning has started to trigger with mac80211 because it can, under
> some circumstances, use spin_lock_bh() protected sections within
> irq-disabled sections. Is that a bug?

Yes, it's a bug.

Why? Not because of the "spin_lock_bh()" itself, but because of the
_unlock_, which does a "local_bh_enable_ip()", which in turn will check
the whole "do_softirq()" if it was the last softirq_count.

And you must not do softirq's when hard-irq's were disabled!

So it should in theory be ok (but perhaps a bit odd) to do something like

spin_lock_irq(&irq_lock);
..do something..
spin_lock_bh(&bh_lock);
spin_unlock_irq(&irq_lock);
.. do something else ..
spin_unlock_bh(&bh_lock);

where the "spin_lock_bh()" itself is in an irq-locked context - as long as
the "spin_unlock_bh()" is *not*.

See?

Linus