From 78305de2f99e9f43ab860dd95bb430b20e26c695 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Matthew Wilcox Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2008 07:20:41 -0400 Subject: [PATCH] Remove mention of semaphores from kernel-locking Since the consensus seems to be to eliminate semaphores where possible, we shouldn't be educating people about how to use them as locks. Use mutexes instead. Semaphores should be described in a separate document if we end up keeping them. Signed-off-by: Matthew Wilcox Acked-by: Rusty Russell --- Documentation/DocBook/kernel-locking.tmpl | 57 ++++++++++------------- 1 file changed, 24 insertions(+), 33 deletions(-) diff --git a/Documentation/DocBook/kernel-locking.tmpl b/Documentation/DocBook/kernel-locking.tmpl index 2510763295d..084f6ad7b7a 100644 --- a/Documentation/DocBook/kernel-locking.tmpl +++ b/Documentation/DocBook/kernel-locking.tmpl @@ -219,10 +219,10 @@ - Three Main Types of Kernel Locks: Spinlocks, Mutexes and Semaphores + Two Main Types of Kernel Locks: Spinlocks and Mutexes - There are three main types of kernel locks. The fundamental type + There are two main types of kernel locks. The fundamental type is the spinlock (include/asm/spinlock.h), which is a very simple single-holder lock: if you can't get the @@ -239,14 +239,6 @@ can't sleep (see ), and so have to use a spinlock instead. - - The third type is a semaphore - (include/linux/semaphore.h): it - can have more than one holder at any time (the number decided at - initialization time), although it is most commonly used as a - single-holder lock (a mutex). If you can't get a semaphore, your - task will be suspended and later on woken up - just like for mutexes. - Neither type of lock is recursive: see . @@ -278,7 +270,7 @@ - Semaphores still exist, because they are required for + Mutexes still exist, because they are required for synchronization between user contexts, as we will see below. @@ -289,18 +281,17 @@ If you have a data structure which is only ever accessed from - user context, then you can use a simple semaphore - (linux/linux/semaphore.h) to protect it. This - is the most trivial case: you initialize the semaphore to the number - of resources available (usually 1), and call - down_interruptible() to grab the semaphore, and - up() to release it. There is also a - down(), which should be avoided, because it + user context, then you can use a simple mutex + (include/linux/mutex.h) to protect it. This + is the most trivial case: you initialize the mutex. Then you can + call mutex_lock_interruptible() to grab the mutex, + and mutex_unlock() to release it. There is also a + mutex_lock(), which should be avoided, because it will not return if a signal is received. - Example: linux/net/core/netfilter.c allows + Example: net/netfilter/nf_sockopt.c allows registration of new setsockopt() and getsockopt() calls, with nf_register_sockopt(). Registration and @@ -515,7 +506,7 @@ If you are in a process context (any syscall) and want to - lock other process out, use a semaphore. You can take a semaphore + lock other process out, use a mutex. You can take a mutex and sleep (copy_from_user*( or kmalloc(x,GFP_KERNEL)). @@ -662,7 +653,7 @@ SLBH SLBH SLBH -DI +MLI None @@ -692,8 +683,8 @@ spin_lock_bh -DI -down_interruptible +MLI +mutex_lock_interruptible @@ -1310,7 +1301,7 @@ as Alan Cox says, Lock data, not code. There is a coding bug where a piece of code tries to grab a spinlock twice: it will spin forever, waiting for the lock to - be released (spinlocks, rwlocks and semaphores are not + be released (spinlocks, rwlocks and mutexes are not recursive in Linux). This is trivial to diagnose: not a stay-up-five-nights-talk-to-fluffy-code-bunnies kind of problem. @@ -1335,7 +1326,7 @@ as Alan Cox says, Lock data, not code. This complete lockup is easy to diagnose: on SMP boxes the - watchdog timer or compiling with DEBUG_SPINLOCKS set + watchdog timer or compiling with DEBUG_SPINLOCK set (include/linux/spinlock.h) will show this up immediately when it happens. @@ -1558,7 +1549,7 @@ the amount of locking which needs to be done. Read/Write Lock Variants - Both spinlocks and semaphores have read/write variants: + Both spinlocks and mutexes have read/write variants: rwlock_t and struct rw_semaphore. These divide users into two classes: the readers and the writers. If you are only reading the data, you can get a read lock, but to write to @@ -1681,7 +1672,7 @@ the amount of locking which needs to be done. #include <linux/slab.h> #include <linux/string.h> +#include <linux/rcupdate.h> - #include <linux/semaphore.h> + #include <linux/mutex.h> #include <asm/errno.h> struct object @@ -1913,7 +1904,7 @@ machines due to caching. - put_user() + put_user() @@ -1927,13 +1918,13 @@ machines due to caching. - down_interruptible() and - down() + mutex_lock_interruptible() and + mutex_lock() - There is a down_trylock() which can be + There is a mutex_trylock() which can be used inside interrupt context, as it will not sleep. - up() will also never sleep. + mutex_unlock() will also never sleep. @@ -2023,7 +2014,7 @@ machines due to caching. Prior to 2.5, or when CONFIG_PREEMPT is unset, processes in user context inside the kernel would not - preempt each other (ie. you had that CPU until you have it up, + preempt each other (ie. you had that CPU until you gave it up, except for interrupts). With the addition of CONFIG_PREEMPT in 2.5.4, this changed: when in user context, higher priority tasks can "cut in": spinlocks -- 2.41.1