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authorPaul E. McKenney <paulmck@kernel.org>2022-09-26 08:57:56 -0700
committerPaul E. McKenney <paulmck@kernel.org>2022-10-21 10:08:43 -0700
commite9f8a790bf682bb4a2f79d0d905b34d55bceb71d (patch)
tree98bc145b5a7058418583d51108c55d08b109eca2 /include/linux/slab.h
parentaba9645bd10bd9f793732b06495b1312ee44865e (diff)
slab: Explain why SLAB_TYPESAFE_BY_RCU reference before locking
It is not obvious to the casual user why it is absolutely necessary to acquire a reference to a SLAB_TYPESAFE_BY_RCU structure before acquiring a lock in that structure. Therefore, add a comment explaining this point. [ paulmck: Apply Vlastimil Babka feedback. ] Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@kernel.org> Cc: Christoph Lameter <cl@linux.com> Cc: Pekka Enberg <penberg@kernel.org> Cc: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com> Cc: Joonsoo Kim <iamjoonsoo.kim@lge.com> Cc: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Cc: Roman Gushchin <roman.gushchin@linux.dev> Cc: Hyeonggon Yoo <42.hyeyoo@gmail.com> Cc: <linux-mm@kvack.org> Acked-by: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz>
Diffstat (limited to 'include/linux/slab.h')
-rw-r--r--include/linux/slab.h11
1 files changed, 11 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/include/linux/slab.h b/include/linux/slab.h
index 90877fcde70b..487418c7ea8c 100644
--- a/include/linux/slab.h
+++ b/include/linux/slab.h
@@ -76,6 +76,17 @@
* rcu_read_lock before reading the address, then rcu_read_unlock after
* taking the spinlock within the structure expected at that address.
*
+ * Note that it is not possible to acquire a lock within a structure
+ * allocated with SLAB_TYPESAFE_BY_RCU without first acquiring a reference
+ * as described above. The reason is that SLAB_TYPESAFE_BY_RCU pages
+ * are not zeroed before being given to the slab, which means that any
+ * locks must be initialized after each and every kmem_struct_alloc().
+ * Alternatively, make the ctor passed to kmem_cache_create() initialize
+ * the locks at page-allocation time, as is done in __i915_request_ctor(),
+ * sighand_ctor(), and anon_vma_ctor(). Such a ctor permits readers
+ * to safely acquire those ctor-initialized locks under rcu_read_lock()
+ * protection.
+ *
* Note that SLAB_TYPESAFE_BY_RCU was originally named SLAB_DESTROY_BY_RCU.
*/
/* Defer freeing slabs to RCU */