Re: [PATCH] atomic: Only take lock when the counter drops to zero on UP as well

["Paul E. McKenney" <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com>]

On Fri, Apr 10, 2009 at 06:13:57PM +0200, Jan Blunck wrote:
> I think it is wrong to unconditionally take the lock before calling
> atomic_dec_and_test() in _atomic_dec_and_lock(). This will deadlock in
> situation where it is known that the counter will not reach zero (e.g. holding
> another reference to the same object) but the lock is already taken.

The thought of calling _atomic_dec_and_lock() when you already hold the
lock really really scares me.

Could you please give an example where you need to do this?

							Thanx, Paul

> Signed-off-by: Jan Blunck <jblunck@suse.de>
> ---
>  lib/dec_and_lock.c |    3 +--
>  1 files changed, 1 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
> 
> diff --git a/lib/dec_and_lock.c b/lib/dec_and_lock.c
> index a65c314..e73822a 100644
> --- a/lib/dec_and_lock.c
> +++ b/lib/dec_and_lock.c
> @@ -19,11 +19,10 @@
>   */
>  int _atomic_dec_and_lock(atomic_t *atomic, spinlock_t *lock)
>  {
> -#ifdef CONFIG_SMP
>  	/* Subtract 1 from counter unless that drops it to 0 (ie. it was 1) */
>  	if (atomic_add_unless(atomic, -1, 1))
>  		return 0;
> -#endif
> +
>  	/* Otherwise do it the slow way */
>  	spin_lock(lock);
>  	if (atomic_dec_and_test(atomic))
> -- 
> 1.6.0.2
>