On 08/28/2011 04:56 PM, Joerg Roedel wrote:
On Sun, Aug 28, 2011 at 04:14:00PM +0300, Avi Kivity wrote:
>  On 08/26/2011 12:24 PM, Roedel, Joerg wrote:

>>  The biggest problem with this approach is that it has to happen in the
>>  context of the given process. Linux can't really modify an mm which
>>  which belong to another context in a safe way.
>>
>
>  Is use_mm() insufficient?

Yes, it introduces a set of race conditions when a process that already
has an mm wants to take over another processes mm temporarily (and when
use_mm is modified to actually provide this functionality). It is only
save when used from kernel-thread context.

One example:

        Process A               Process B                       Process C
        .                       .                               .
        .               <--  takes A->mm                  .
        .                       and assignes as B->mm                .
        .                       .                       -->  Wants to take
        .                       .                               B->mm, but gets
                                                                A->mm now

Good catch.


This can't be secured by a lock, because it introduces potential
A->B<-->B->A lock problem when two processes try to take each others mm.
It could probably be solved by a task->real_mm pointer, havn't thought
about this yet...


Or a workqueue -  you get a kernel thread context with a bit of boilerplate.

--
error compiling committee.c: too many arguments to function

_______________________________________________
Linuxppc-dev mailing list
Linuxppc-dev@lists.ozlabs.org
https://lists.ozlabs.org/listinfo/linuxppc-dev

Reply via email to