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Date: Thu, 20 May 2010 20:35:43 -0700
Message-ID: <AANLkTiks8Wb95EC-cJsfdoboIif78vfxKJr-XjmBtOCv@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 07/10] generic rwsem: implement down_read_critical() / 
	up_read_critical()
From: Michel Lespinasse <walken@google.com>
To: David Howells <dhowells@redhat.com>
Cc: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>,
       Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>, Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>,
       LKML <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
       Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>,
       Mike Waychison <mikew@google.com>,
       Suleiman Souhlal <suleiman@google.com>, Ying Han <yinghan@google.com>
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On Wed, May 19, 2010 at 6:21 AM, David Howells <dhowells@redhat.com> wrote:
> Michel Lespinasse <walken@google.com> wrote:
>
>> +void __sched down_read_critical(struct rw_semaphore *sem)
>> +{
>> +     might_sleep();
>> +     rwsem_acquire_read(&sem->dep_map, 0, 0, _RET_IP_);
>> +
>> +     LOCK_CONTENDED(sem, __down_read_trylock, __down_read_unfair);
>> +
>> +     preempt_disable();
>
> Shouldn't preemption really be disabled before __down_read_unfair() is called?
> Otherwise you can get an unfair read on a sem and immediately get taken off
> the CPU.  Of course, this means __down_read_unfair() would have to deal with
> that in the slow path:-/

I think it's not that bad - I mean, the unfairness does not come into
factor here. If you tried to do a regular down_read(), you could also
get preempted on your way to the blocking path. Being preempted on the
way to your critical section after a successful (if unfair) acquire
really is no worse.

The critical section prevents you from blocking on long-latency events
such as disk accesses; being preempted but still runnable is not
nearly as bad.

-- 
Michel "Walken" Lespinasse
A program is never fully debugged until the last user dies.