Re: [RFC][PATCH 5/9] vfs: Introduce basic infrastructure for revoking a file

Jonathan Corbet
2009-04-14T22:12:56Z

Hi, Eric,

One little thing I noticed as I was looking at this...

> +int fops_substitute(struct file *file, const struct file_operations *f_op,
> + struct vm_operations_struct *vm_ops)
> +{

[...]

> + /*
> + * Wait until there are no more callers in the original
> + * file_operations methods.
> + */
> + while (atomic_long_read(&file->f_use) > 0)
> + schedule_timeout_interruptible(1);

You use an interruptible sleep here, but there's no signal check to get you
out of the loop. So it's not really interruptible. If f_use never goes to
zero (a distressingly likely possibility, I fear), this code will create
the equivalent of an unkillable D-wait state without ever actually showing
up that way in "ps".

Actually, now that I look, once you've got a signal pending you'll stay
in TASK_RUNNING, so the above could turn into a busy-wait.

Unless I've missed something...?

I have no idea what the right thing to do in the face of a signal would
be. Perhaps the wait-for-zero and release() call stuff should be dumped
into a workqueue and done asynchronously? OTOH, I can see a need to know
when the revoke operation is really done...

jon