rcu: Documentation update for CONFIG_PROVE_RCU

Adds a lockdep.txt file and updates checklist.txt and
whatisRCU.txt to reflect the new lockdep-enabled capabilities of
RCU.

Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Cc: laijs@cn.fujitsu.com
Cc: dipankar@in.ibm.com
Cc: mathieu.desnoyers@polymtl.ca
Cc: josh@joshtriplett.org
Cc: dvhltc@us.ibm.com
Cc: niv@us.ibm.com
Cc: peterz@infradead.org
Cc: rostedt@goodmis.org
Cc: Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu
Cc: dhowells@redhat.com
LKML-Reference: <1266887105-1528-13-git-send-email-paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>

1 files changed, 67 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/RCU/lockdep.txt b/Documentation/RCU/lockdep.txt
new file mode 100644
index 000000000000..fe24b58627bd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/RCU/lockdep.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,67 @@
+RCU and lockdep checking
+
+All flavors of RCU have lockdep checking available, so that lockdep is
+aware of when each task enters and leaves any flavor of RCU read-side
+critical section.  Each flavor of RCU is tracked separately (but note
+that this is not the case in 2.6.32 and earlier).  This allows lockdep's
+tracking to include RCU state, which can sometimes help when debugging
+deadlocks and the like.
+
+In addition, RCU provides the following primitives that check lockdep's
+state:
+
+        rcu_read_lock_held() for normal RCU.
+        rcu_read_lock_bh_held() for RCU-bh.
+        rcu_read_lock_sched_held() for RCU-sched.
+        srcu_read_lock_held() for SRCU.
+
+These functions are conservative, and will therefore return 1 if they
+aren't certain (for example, if CONFIG_DEBUG_LOCK_ALLOC is not set).
+This prevents things like WARN_ON(!rcu_read_lock_held()) from giving false
+positives when lockdep is disabled.
+
+In addition, a separate kernel config parameter CONFIG_PROVE_RCU enables
+checking of rcu_dereference() primitives:
+
+        rcu_dereference(p):
+                Check for RCU read-side critical section.
+        rcu_dereference_bh(p):
+                Check for RCU-bh read-side critical section.
+        rcu_dereference_sched(p):
+                Check for RCU-sched read-side critical section.
+        srcu_dereference(p, sp):
+                Check for SRCU read-side critical section.
+        rcu_dereference_check(p, c):
+                Use explicit check expression "c".
+        rcu_dereference_raw(p)
+                Don't check.  (Use sparingly, if at all.)
+
+The rcu_dereference_check() check expression can be any boolean
+expression, but would normally include one of the rcu_read_lock_held()
+family of functions and a lockdep expression.  However, any boolean
+expression can be used.  For a moderately ornate example, consider
+the following:
+
+        file = rcu_dereference_check(fdt->fd[fd],
+                                     rcu_read_lock_held() ||
+                                     lockdep_is_held(&files->file_lock) ||
+                                     atomic_read(&files->count) == 1);
+
+This expression picks up the pointer "fdt->fd[fd]" in an RCU-safe manner,
+and, if CONFIG_PROVE_RCU is configured, verifies that this expression
+is used in:
+
+1.      An RCU read-side critical section, or
+2.      with files->file_lock held, or
+3.      on an unshared files_struct.
+
+In case (1), the pointer is picked up in an RCU-safe manner for vanilla
+RCU read-side critical sections, in case (2) the ->file_lock prevents
+any change from taking place, and finally, in case (3) the current task
+is the only task accessing the file_struct, again preventing any change
+from taking place.
+
+There are currently only "universal" versions of the rcu_assign_pointer()
+and RCU list-/tree-traversal primitives, which do not (yet) check for
+being in an RCU read-side critical section.  In the future, separate
+versions of these primitives might be created.