On Mon, 22 Jul 2002, Omer Zak wrote:

> Why then there is such a thing as "uninterruptible sleep" in Unix/Linux?
> What useful purpose (besides full Posix conformance) does this serve?

cause in some situations, you cannot afford to be interrupted. for
example, when you have a mutex you own, and you want to unlock it, you can
not afford to be interrupted in the middle of trying to do that, since
that'll leave the mutex locked, possibly breaking some sub-system.

there are other, less trivial cases, i gather, in various parts of the
kernel. not sure why that'd be the case with disk access, though. you
might want to go read the relevant parts of the code.

-- 
guy

"For world domination - press 1,
 or dial 0, and please hold, for the creator." -- nob o. dy


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