1. 13 9月, 2013 1 次提交
    • W
      seqlock: Add a new locking reader type · 1370e97b
      Waiman Long 提交于
      The sequence lock (seqlock) was originally designed for the cases where
      the readers do not need to block the writers by making the readers retry
      the read operation when the data change.
      
      Since then, the use cases have been expanded to include situations where
      a thread does not need to change the data (effectively a reader) at all
      but have to take the writer lock because it can't tolerate changes to
      the protected structure.  Some examples are the d_path() function and
      the getcwd() syscall in fs/dcache.c where the functions take the writer
      lock on rename_lock even though they don't need to change anything in
      the protected data structure at all.  This is inefficient as a reader is
      now blocking other sequence number reading readers from moving forward
      by pretending to be a writer.
      
      This patch tries to eliminate this inefficiency by introducing a new
      type of locking reader to the seqlock locking mechanism.  This new
      locking reader will try to take an exclusive lock preventing other
      writers and locking readers from going forward.  However, it won't
      affect the progress of the other sequence number reading readers as the
      sequence number won't be changed.
      Signed-off-by: NWaiman Long <Waiman.Long@hp.com>
      Cc: Alexander Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>
      Signed-off-by: NLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
      1370e97b
  2. 12 9月, 2013 39 次提交