Re: [PATCH] Fix a race in pid generation that causes pids to be reused immediately.

Andrew Morton
2010-06-15T01:58:23Z

On Mon, 14 Jun 2010 20:56:19 -0400 tytso@mit.edu wrote:

> On Mon, Jun 14, 2010 at 04:58:51PM -0700, Andrew Morton wrote:
> > Using
> >
> > grep -r '[ ]cmpxchg[^_]' . | grep -v /arch/
> >
> > I can't see any cmpxchg() callers in truly generic code. lockdep and
> > kernel/trace/ring_buffer.c aren't used on the more remote
> > architectures, I think.
>
> What about:
>
> drivers/gpu/drm/drm_lock.c: prev = cmpxchg(lock, old, new);
> kernel/lockdep.c: n = cmpxchg(&nr_chain_hlocks, cn, cn + chain->de

I put these in the not-used-on-weird-architectures bucket.

> kernel/sched_clock.c: if (cmpxchg64(&scd->clock, old_clock, clock) != old_cloc

I guess that'll flush out any stragglers.

I suspect sched_clock.c might be generating fair amounts of code which
UP builds don't need.

> fs/btrfs/inode.c: if (cmpxchg(&root->orphan_cleanup_state, 0, ORPHAN_CLEAN
> fs/ext4/inode.c: } while (cmpxchg(&ei->i_flags, old_fl, new_fl) != old_fl
>
> The last is quite new --- I had just recently done a similar set of
> research as you did before accepting the patch that added cmpxchg into
> ext4 (during the last merge window), and I thought cmpxchg() had
> entered the "supported by all architectures" category. It looked like
> it had only recently reached state, but I had reached the conclusion
> that it was safe to use.

I think you're probably right, as long as one sticks with 4-byte
scalars. The cmpxchg-is-now-generic change snuck in under the radar
(mine, at least).