On Tue, Sep 22, 2026 at 04:35:31PM +0100, Lorenzo Stoakes (ARM) wrote: > m68k-motorola required the biggest change - since RCU page table freeing > uses call_rcu(), this means page table freeing can arise from softirq > context. > > This was fixed with an IRQ-safe spin lock used in both get_pointer_table() > and free_pointer_table().
You don't need to use an irq-safe spinlock for softirqs. It does work, but it's overkill since it disables hardirqs. If you use spin_lock_bh(), only softirqs are prevented from running (and it's safe to call spin_lock_bh() when in softirq context, just like it's safe to call spin_lock_irqsave() in hardirq or softirq context).
