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Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/RCU/rcu_dereference.rst')
| -rw-r--r-- | Documentation/RCU/rcu_dereference.rst | 21 |
1 files changed, 16 insertions, 5 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/RCU/rcu_dereference.rst b/Documentation/RCU/rcu_dereference.rst index 81e828c8313b..3b739f6243c8 100644 --- a/Documentation/RCU/rcu_dereference.rst +++ b/Documentation/RCU/rcu_dereference.rst @@ -19,8 +19,9 @@ Follow these rules to keep your RCU code working properly: can reload the value, and won't your code have fun with two different values for a single pointer! Without rcu_dereference(), DEC Alpha can load a pointer, dereference that pointer, and - return data preceding initialization that preceded the store of - the pointer. + return data preceding initialization that preceded the store + of the pointer. (As noted later, in recent kernels READ_ONCE() + also prevents DEC Alpha from playing these tricks.) In addition, the volatile cast in rcu_dereference() prevents the compiler from deducing the resulting pointer value. Please see @@ -34,7 +35,7 @@ Follow these rules to keep your RCU code working properly: takes on the role of the lockless_dereference() primitive that was removed in v4.15. -- You are only permitted to use rcu_dereference on pointer values. +- You are only permitted to use rcu_dereference() on pointer values. The compiler simply knows too much about integral values to trust it to carry dependencies through integer operations. There are a very few exceptions, namely that you can temporarily @@ -240,6 +241,7 @@ precautions. To see this, consider the following code fragment:: struct foo *q; int r1, r2; + rcu_read_lock(); p = rcu_dereference(gp2); if (p == NULL) return; @@ -248,7 +250,10 @@ precautions. To see this, consider the following code fragment:: if (p == q) { /* The compiler decides that q->c is same as p->c. */ r2 = p->c; /* Could get 44 on weakly order system. */ + } else { + r2 = p->c - r1; /* Unconditional access to p->c. */ } + rcu_read_unlock(); do_something_with(r1, r2); } @@ -297,6 +302,7 @@ Then one approach is to use locking, for example, as follows:: struct foo *q; int r1, r2; + rcu_read_lock(); p = rcu_dereference(gp2); if (p == NULL) return; @@ -306,7 +312,12 @@ Then one approach is to use locking, for example, as follows:: if (p == q) { /* The compiler decides that q->c is same as p->c. */ r2 = p->c; /* Locking guarantees r2 == 144. */ + } else { + spin_lock(&q->lock); + r2 = q->c - r1; + spin_unlock(&q->lock); } + rcu_read_unlock(); spin_unlock(&p->lock); do_something_with(r1, r2); } @@ -364,7 +375,7 @@ the exact value of "p" even in the not-equals case. This allows the compiler to make the return values independent of the load from "gp", in turn destroying the ordering between this load and the loads of the return values. This can result in "p->b" returning pre-initialization -garbage values. +garbage values on weakly ordered systems. In short, rcu_dereference() is *not* optional when you are going to dereference the resulting pointer. @@ -430,7 +441,7 @@ member of the rcu_dereference() to use in various situations: SPARSE CHECKING OF RCU-PROTECTED POINTERS ----------------------------------------- -The sparse static-analysis tool checks for direct access to RCU-protected +The sparse static-analysis tool checks for non-RCU access to RCU-protected pointers, which can result in "interesting" bugs due to compiler optimizations involving invented loads and perhaps also load tearing. For example, suppose someone mistakenly does something like this:: |