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authorSerge E. Hallyn <serue@us.ibm.com>2010-04-26 14:58:49 +0400
committerJames Morris <jmorris@namei.org>2010-04-27 02:49:03 +0400
commitb03df87d119f50715891dcc09e487f6ae5c029f1 (patch)
tree69ef56146350a2f7d7bc7743e856490cc14bb7a5 /Documentation/credentials.txt
parent98ec4373bab1d839f794e9a4edc29f77eb9d897e (diff)
downloadlinux-b03df87d119f50715891dcc09e487f6ae5c029f1.tar.xz
CRED: Holding a spinlock does not imply the holding of RCU read lock
Change the credentials documentation to make it clear that the RCU read lock must be explicitly held when accessing credentials pointers in some other task than current. Holding a spinlock does not implicitly hold the RCU read lock. Signed-off-by: Serge Hallyn <serue@us.ibm.com> Reviewed-by: Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com> Signed-off-by: David Howells <dhowells@redhat.com> Signed-off-by: James Morris <jmorris@namei.org>
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/credentials.txt')
-rw-r--r--Documentation/credentials.txt14
1 files changed, 5 insertions, 9 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/credentials.txt b/Documentation/credentials.txt
index df03169782ea..a2db35287003 100644
--- a/Documentation/credentials.txt
+++ b/Documentation/credentials.txt
@@ -408,9 +408,6 @@ This should be used inside the RCU read lock, as in the following example:
...
}
-A function need not get RCU read lock to use __task_cred() if it is holding a
-spinlock at the time as this implicitly holds the RCU read lock.
-
Should it be necessary to hold another task's credentials for a long period of
time, and possibly to sleep whilst doing so, then the caller should get a
reference on them using:
@@ -426,17 +423,16 @@ credentials, hiding the RCU magic from the caller:
uid_t task_uid(task) Task's real UID
uid_t task_euid(task) Task's effective UID
-If the caller is holding a spinlock or the RCU read lock at the time anyway,
-then:
+If the caller is holding the RCU read lock at the time anyway, then:
__task_cred(task)->uid
__task_cred(task)->euid
should be used instead. Similarly, if multiple aspects of a task's credentials
-need to be accessed, RCU read lock or a spinlock should be used, __task_cred()
-called, the result stored in a temporary pointer and then the credential
-aspects called from that before dropping the lock. This prevents the
-potentially expensive RCU magic from being invoked multiple times.
+need to be accessed, RCU read lock should be used, __task_cred() called, the
+result stored in a temporary pointer and then the credential aspects called
+from that before dropping the lock. This prevents the potentially expensive
+RCU magic from being invoked multiple times.
Should some other single aspect of another task's credentials need to be
accessed, then this can be used: