Re: [PATCH] move put_task_struct() reaping into a thread [Re: 2.6.18-rt1]

Ingo Molnar
2006-09-27T09:17:09Z

* Eric W. Biederman <ebiederm@xmission.com> wrote:

> About the rcu removal discussion I heard it was more the possibility
> was suggested because the downside was significant, and normal locks
> were more deterministic. The emphasis was that call_rcu could be a
> problem and that something needs to happen to fix that.

RCU is really mostly used as a garbage-collection scheme, and hence its
latency, while it can be practically problematic in some cases, never is
directly visible in terms of application or kernel behavior.

the same is in this case: the call_rcu() use is for gathering totally
unused task structs. There should be no side-effects.

Ingo