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-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 */