On Wed, Jan 09, 2008 at 08:38:56AM +0100, Eric Dumazet wrote: > > I am not sure this is valid, since it will do this : > > r = rt_hash_table[st->bucket].chain; > if (r) > return rcu_dereference(r); > > So compiler might be dumb enough do dereference > &rt_hash_table[st->bucket].chain two times.
That wouldn't be a problem at all. The key is to add a barrier between reading the pointer: r = rt_hash_table[st->bucket].chain and dereferencing it later, e.g., r->u.dst.rt_next The barrier is there so that when we dereference r we don't read stale cache that was there before the memory at r was initialised. How many times you read the pointer value before the barrier is irrelevant to the effectiveness of the barrier preceding the dereference. Cheers, -- Visit Openswan at http://www.openswan.org/ Email: Herbert Xu ~{PmV>HI~} <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Home Page: http://gondor.apana.org.au/~herbert/ PGP Key: http://gondor.apana.org.au/~herbert/pubkey.txt -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe netdev" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html