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Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/RCU/lockdep.txt')
-rw-r--r-- | Documentation/RCU/lockdep.txt | 67 |
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 | |||
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1 | RCU and lockdep checking | ||
2 | |||
3 | All flavors of RCU have lockdep checking available, so that lockdep is | ||
4 | aware of when each task enters and leaves any flavor of RCU read-side | ||
5 | critical section. Each flavor of RCU is tracked separately (but note | ||
6 | that this is not the case in 2.6.32 and earlier). This allows lockdep's | ||
7 | tracking to include RCU state, which can sometimes help when debugging | ||
8 | deadlocks and the like. | ||
9 | |||
10 | In addition, RCU provides the following primitives that check lockdep's | ||
11 | state: | ||
12 | |||
13 | rcu_read_lock_held() for normal RCU. | ||
14 | rcu_read_lock_bh_held() for RCU-bh. | ||
15 | rcu_read_lock_sched_held() for RCU-sched. | ||
16 | srcu_read_lock_held() for SRCU. | ||
17 | |||
18 | These functions are conservative, and will therefore return 1 if they | ||
19 | aren't certain (for example, if CONFIG_DEBUG_LOCK_ALLOC is not set). | ||
20 | This prevents things like WARN_ON(!rcu_read_lock_held()) from giving false | ||
21 | positives when lockdep is disabled. | ||
22 | |||
23 | In addition, a separate kernel config parameter CONFIG_PROVE_RCU enables | ||
24 | checking of rcu_dereference() primitives: | ||
25 | |||
26 | rcu_dereference(p): | ||
27 | Check for RCU read-side critical section. | ||
28 | rcu_dereference_bh(p): | ||
29 | Check for RCU-bh read-side critical section. | ||
30 | rcu_dereference_sched(p): | ||
31 | Check for RCU-sched read-side critical section. | ||
32 | srcu_dereference(p, sp): | ||
33 | Check for SRCU read-side critical section. | ||
34 | rcu_dereference_check(p, c): | ||
35 | Use explicit check expression "c". | ||
36 | rcu_dereference_raw(p) | ||
37 | Don't check. (Use sparingly, if at all.) | ||
38 | |||
39 | The rcu_dereference_check() check expression can be any boolean | ||
40 | expression, but would normally include one of the rcu_read_lock_held() | ||
41 | family of functions and a lockdep expression. However, any boolean | ||
42 | expression can be used. For a moderately ornate example, consider | ||
43 | the following: | ||
44 | |||
45 | file = rcu_dereference_check(fdt->fd[fd], | ||
46 | rcu_read_lock_held() || | ||
47 | lockdep_is_held(&files->file_lock) || | ||
48 | atomic_read(&files->count) == 1); | ||
49 | |||
50 | This expression picks up the pointer "fdt->fd[fd]" in an RCU-safe manner, | ||
51 | and, if CONFIG_PROVE_RCU is configured, verifies that this expression | ||
52 | is used in: | ||
53 | |||
54 | 1. An RCU read-side critical section, or | ||
55 | 2. with files->file_lock held, or | ||
56 | 3. on an unshared files_struct. | ||
57 | |||
58 | In case (1), the pointer is picked up in an RCU-safe manner for vanilla | ||
59 | RCU read-side critical sections, in case (2) the ->file_lock prevents | ||
60 | any change from taking place, and finally, in case (3) the current task | ||
61 | is the only task accessing the file_struct, again preventing any change | ||
62 | from taking place. | ||
63 | |||
64 | There are currently only "universal" versions of the rcu_assign_pointer() | ||
65 | and RCU list-/tree-traversal primitives, which do not (yet) check for | ||
66 | being in an RCU read-side critical section. In the future, separate | ||
67 | versions of these primitives might be created. | ||