1. 19 May, 2010 1 commit
    • Tony Breeds's avatar
      mutex: Fix optimistic spinning vs. BKL · fd6be105
      Tony Breeds authored
      Currently, we can hit a nasty case with optimistic
      spinning on mutexes:
      
          CPU A tries to take a mutex, while holding the BKL
      
          CPU B tried to take the BLK while holding the mutex
      
      This looks like a AB-BA scenario but in practice, is
      allowed and happens due to the auto-release on
      schedule() nature of the BKL.
      
      In that case, the optimistic spinning code can get us
      into a situation where instead of going to sleep, A
      will spin waiting for B who is spinning waiting for
      A, and the only way out of that loop is the
      need_resched() test in mutex_spin_on_owner().
      
      This patch fixes it by completely disabling spinning
      if we own the BKL. This adds one more detail to the
      extensive list of reasons why it's a bad idea for
      kernel code to be holding the BKL.
      Signed-off-by: default avatarTony Breeds <tony@bakeyournoodle.com>
      Acked-by: default avatarLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
      Acked-by: default avatarPeter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@chello.nl>
      Cc: Benjamin Herrenschmidt <benh@kernel.crashing.org>
      Cc: <stable@kernel.org>
      LKML-Reference: <20100519054636.GC12389@ozlabs.org>
      [ added an unlikely() attribute to the branch ]
      Signed-off-by: default avatarIngo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
      fd6be105
  2. 18 May, 2010 23 commits
  3. 17 May, 2010 16 commits