Hi kernel-list-readers! We just had a problem when running some formatting-utils on a large amount of disks synchronously: We got a NULL-pointer violation when accessig blk_size[major] for our major number. Further research showed, that grok_partitions was running at that time, which has been called by register_disk, which our device driver issues after a disk has been formatted. Grok_partitions first initializes blk_size[major] with a NULL pointer, detects the partitions and then assigns the original value to blk_size[major] again. Can anyone explain to me, why grok_partitions has to clear this pointer? Why is this all done without any lock which causes race conditions all over the block-device layer (for example generic_make_request() in ll_rw_blk.c first checks if the pointer is set and afterwards accesses the array behind the pointer)? mit freundlichem Gruß / with kind regards Carsten Otte IBM Deutschland Entwicklung GmbH Linux for 390/zSeries Development - Device Driver Team Phone: +49/07031/16-4076 IBM internal phone: *120-4076 -- We are Linux. Resistance indicates that you're missing the point! - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
