Hello, I'll Cc linux-kernel
On (03/06/18 17:21), Steven Rostedt wrote: > On Tue, 6 Mar 2018 15:58:46 +0100 > Andrea Parri <parri.and...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > Dear PRINTK maintainers, > > > > Following a recent discussion on LKML[1], I started auditing callsites > > of spin_is_locked() and the "implicit" assumptions these sites made on > > the memory ordering enforced by this primitive (not a first attempt[2], > > FWIW). As it turns out, this primitive is mostly used (40+ calls) for > > debugging purposes (WARN_ON(!spin_is_locked()) or such), but the calls > > to raw_spin_is_locked() in printk_safe seem to escape this usage. > > > > Which assumptions are you relying on (if any) for raw_spin_is_locked() > > enforced memory ordering? > > We don't care about other CPUs. The use case here is to make sure that > the printk in an NMI does not take the lock when the current CPU has > it. Memory ordering is fine when dealing with only one CPU. If other > CPUs mess with the result, then the worse that will happen is that we > go to the "safe" mode when we didn't have to. Right, thanks Steven. A side note, I think the only reason we have that raw_spin_is_locked() is because we call console drivers in printk-safe mode, so we don't have a 1:1 mapping: printk-safe == raw_spin_is_locked(logbuf) I sort of think we can stop calling console drivers in printk-safe, there seems to be no real reasons to do so (kind of). And then we will have that missing printk-safe == raw_spin_is_locked(logbuf) so we will be able to drop raw_spin_is_locked() from printk-safe and make logbuf spin_lock static again. > BTW, next time when asking a question, don't do it off list. This may > be something others would like to know. I usually don't answer > questions like this when they don't include a Cc to a mailing list. Agreed. -ss