From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S932745AbZHDJem (ORCPT ); Tue, 4 Aug 2009 05:34:42 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S932716AbZHDJel (ORCPT ); Tue, 4 Aug 2009 05:34:41 -0400 Received: from mx2.redhat.com ([66.187.237.31]:39409 "EHLO mx2.redhat.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1755268AbZHDJel (ORCPT ); Tue, 4 Aug 2009 05:34:41 -0400 Date: Tue, 4 Aug 2009 12:33:32 +0300 From: "Michael S. Tsirkin" To: Avi Kivity Cc: davidel@xmailserver.org, gleb@redhat.com, kvm@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: [PATCH-RFC 2/2] eventfd: EFD_STATE flag Message-ID: <20090804093332.GA3334@redhat.com> References: <20090728175538.GC21549@redhat.com> <4A76FDB2.7080706@redhat.com> <20090803151426.GA3630@redhat.com> <4A770260.5000507@redhat.com> <20090803165708.GB3630@redhat.com> <4A77F6EF.8010002@redhat.com> <20090804085406.GA3311@redhat.com> <4A77FCB8.1000205@redhat.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <4A77FCB8.1000205@redhat.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.19 (2009-01-05) Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Tue, Aug 04, 2009 at 12:17:44PM +0300, Avi Kivity wrote: > On 08/04/2009 11:54 AM, Michael S. Tsirkin wrote: >> On Tue, Aug 04, 2009 at 11:53:03AM +0300, Avi Kivity wrote: >> >>> On 08/03/2009 07:57 PM, Michael S. Tsirkin wrote: >>> >>>>> Why not do it at the point of the write? >>>>> >>>>> if (value != ctx->count) { >>>>> ctx->count = value; >>>>> wake_things_up(); >>>>> } >>>>> >>>>> >>>> What if write comes before read? >>>> >>>> >>> The read will get the new value. >>> >> >> Yes :) But how does read know it should not block? >> > > If a different read comes after the write but after our read, it will > have transferred the value, resulting in the same situation. Not the same: one reader wakes up, others sleep. Multiple reads from the same fd behave this way for any file I can think of. Consider regular eventfd, or a pipe, a socket ... But if we want to support blocking reads, we probably should not require the readers to sync with writers. > I think reads should never block with a state based mechanism. Yes, with no support for blocking reads, we don't need the state. In that case, we probably want to error on open out unless O_NONBLOCK is specified. But why is this a good idea? > -- > error compiling committee.c: too many arguments to function