2007-05-03 21:38:44

by Oleg Nesterov

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Subject: kernel/relay.c: a strange usage of delayed_work

relay_switch_subbuf() does schedule_delayed_work(&buf->wake_readers, 1),
wakeup_readers() only does wake_up_interruptible() and nothing more.

Why can't we use a plain timer for this?

In any case, this "wake_up ->read_wait after a minimal possible delay"
looks somewhat strange to me, could you explain? just curious.

Oleg.


2007-05-04 05:47:24

by Tom Zanussi

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: kernel/relay.c: a strange usage of delayed_work

On Fri, 2007-05-04 at 01:38 +0400, Oleg Nesterov wrote:
> relay_switch_subbuf() does schedule_delayed_work(&buf->wake_readers, 1),
> wakeup_readers() only does wake_up_interruptible() and nothing more.
>
> Why can't we use a plain timer for this?
>
> In any case, this "wake_up ->read_wait after a minimal possible delay"
> looks somewhat strange to me, could you explain? just curious.
>

The reason it's done that way is that if the event that causes the
relay_switch_subbuf() happens to be an event logged from schedule(), and
we directly call wake_up_interruptible() at that point, we lock up the
machine because it ends up back in schedule(). Deferring it avoids the
problem.

I don't see any problem with using a plain timer instead - I'll work up
a patch to make that change.

Tom