Received-SPF: pass (google.com: domain of linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org designates 23.128.96.18 as permitted sender) client-ip=23.128.96.18;
Subject: Re: [PATCH v5 3/5] counter: Add character device interface
To:     William Breathitt Gray <vilhelm.gray@gmail.com>
Cc:     jic23@kernel.org, kamel.bouhara@bootlin.com, gwendal@chromium.org,
        alexandre.belloni@bootlin.com, linux-iio@vger.kernel.org,
        linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
        linux-stm32@st-md-mailman.stormreply.com,
        linux-arm-kernel@lists.infradead.org, syednwaris@gmail.com,
        patrick.havelange@essensium.com, fabrice.gasnier@st.com,
        mcoquelin.stm32@gmail.com, alexandre.torgue@st.com
References: <cover.1601170670.git.vilhelm.gray@gmail.com>
 <00be1fccc672c5207f3b04fe4cc09c29e22641f4.1601170670.git.vilhelm.gray@gmail.com>
 <cc1f7e4d-18d1-bc28-8ce3-e3edcd91bcab@lechnology.com>
 <20201018165822.GE231549@shinobu>
From:   David Lechner <david@lechnology.com>
Message-ID: <f2bac8b2-108d-fa4c-cb63-8ff85ce04d1f@lechnology.com>
Date:   Tue, 20 Oct 2020 11:06:42 -0500
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:68.0) Gecko/20100101
 Thunderbird/68.10.0
MIME-Version: 1.0
In-Reply-To: <20201018165822.GE231549@shinobu>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed
Content-Language: en-US
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Precedence: bulk

On 10/18/20 11:58 AM, William Breathitt Gray wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 14, 2020 at 05:40:44PM -0500, David Lechner wrote:
>> On 9/26/20 9:18 PM, William Breathitt Gray wrote:
>>> +static ssize_t counter_chrdev_read(struct file *filp, char __user *buf,
>>> +				   size_t len, loff_t *f_ps)
>>> +{
>>> +	struct counter_device *const counter = filp->private_data;
>>> +	int err;
>>> +	unsigned long flags;
>>> +	unsigned int copied;
>>> +
>>> +	if (len < sizeof(struct counter_event))
>>> +		return -EINVAL;
>>> +
>>> +	do {
>>> +		if (kfifo_is_empty(&counter->events)) {
>>> +			if (filp->f_flags & O_NONBLOCK)
>>> +				return -EAGAIN;
>>> +
>>> +			err = wait_event_interruptible(counter->events_wait,
>>> +					!kfifo_is_empty(&counter->events));
>>> +			if (err)
>>> +				return err;
>>> +		}
>>> +
>>> +		raw_spin_lock_irqsave(&counter->events_lock, flags);
>>> +		err = kfifo_to_user(&counter->events, buf, len, &copied);
>>> +		raw_spin_unlock_irqrestore(&counter->events_lock, flags);
>>> +		if (err)
>>> +			return err;
>>> +	} while (!copied);
>>> +
>>> +	return copied;
>>> +}
>>
>> All other uses of kfifo_to_user() I saw use a mutex instead of spin
>> lock. I don't see a reason for disabling interrupts here.
> 
> The Counter character device interface is special in this case because
> counter->events could be accessed from an interrupt context. This is
> possible if counter_push_event() is called for an interrupt (as is the
> case for the 104_quad_8 driver). In this case, we can't use mutex
> because we can't sleep in an interrupt context, so our only option is to
> use spin lock.
> 


The way I understand it, locking is only needed for concurrent readers
and locking between reader and writer is not needed.