diff options
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/RCU/listRCU.rst')
| -rw-r--r-- | Documentation/RCU/listRCU.rst | 19 |
1 files changed, 15 insertions, 4 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/RCU/listRCU.rst b/Documentation/RCU/listRCU.rst index bdc4bcc5289f..d8bb98623c12 100644 --- a/Documentation/RCU/listRCU.rst +++ b/Documentation/RCU/listRCU.rst @@ -8,6 +8,15 @@ One of the most common uses of RCU is protecting read-mostly linked lists that all of the required memory ordering is provided by the list macros. This document describes several list-based RCU use cases. +When iterating a list while holding the rcu_read_lock(), writers may +modify the list. The reader is guaranteed to see all of the elements +which were added to the list before they acquired the rcu_read_lock() +and are still on the list when they drop the rcu_read_unlock(). +Elements which are added to, or removed from the list may or may not +be seen. If the writer calls list_replace_rcu(), the reader may see +either the old element or the new element; they will not see both, +nor will they see neither. + Example 1: Read-mostly list: Deferred Destruction ------------------------------------------------- @@ -325,7 +334,7 @@ If the system-call audit module were to ever need to reject stale data, one way to accomplish this would be to add a ``deleted`` flag and a ``lock`` spinlock to the ``audit_entry`` structure, and modify audit_filter_task() as follows:: - static enum audit_state audit_filter_task(struct task_struct *tsk) + static struct audit_entry *audit_filter_task(struct task_struct *tsk, char **key) { struct audit_entry *e; enum audit_state state; @@ -337,16 +346,18 @@ to accomplish this would be to add a ``deleted`` flag and a ``lock`` spinlock to if (e->deleted) { spin_unlock(&e->lock); rcu_read_unlock(); - return AUDIT_BUILD_CONTEXT; + return NULL; } rcu_read_unlock(); if (state == AUDIT_STATE_RECORD) *key = kstrdup(e->rule.filterkey, GFP_ATOMIC); - return state; + /* As long as e->lock is held, e is valid and + * its value is not stale */ + return e; } } rcu_read_unlock(); - return AUDIT_BUILD_CONTEXT; + return NULL; } The ``audit_del_rule()`` function would need to set the ``deleted`` flag under the |