When GSO packets come from an untrusted source (e.g., a Xen guest domain),
we need to verify the header integrity before passing it to the hardware.
Since the first step in GSO is to verify the header, we can reuse that
code by adding a new bit to gso_type: SKB_GSO_DODGY. Packets with this
bit set can only be fed directly to devices with the corresponding bit
NETIF_F_GSO_ROBUST. If the device doesn't have that bit, then the skb
is fed to the GSO engine which will allow the packet to be sent to the
hardware if it passes the header check.
This patch changes the sg flag to a full features flag. The same method
can be used to implement TSO ECN support. We simply have to mark packets
with CWR set with SKB_GSO_ECN so that only hardware with a corresponding
NETIF_F_TSO_ECN can accept them. The GSO engine can either fully segment
the packet, or segment the first MTU and pass the rest to the hardware for
further segmentation.
Signed-off-by: Herbert Xu <herbert@gondor.apana.org.au>
Signed-off-by: David S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
* git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/gregkh/devfs-2.6: (22 commits)
[PATCH] devfs: Remove it from the feature_removal.txt file
[PATCH] devfs: Last little devfs cleanups throughout the kernel tree.
[PATCH] devfs: Rename TTY_DRIVER_NO_DEVFS to TTY_DRIVER_DYNAMIC_DEV
[PATCH] devfs: Remove the tty_driver devfs_name field as it's no longer needed
[PATCH] devfs: Remove the line_driver devfs_name field as it's no longer needed
[PATCH] devfs: Remove the videodevice devfs_name field as it's no longer needed
[PATCH] devfs: Remove the gendisk devfs_name field as it's no longer needed
[PATCH] devfs: Remove the miscdevice devfs_name field as it's no longer needed
[PATCH] devfs: Remove the devfs_fs_kernel.h file from the tree
[PATCH] devfs: Remove devfs_remove() function from the kernel tree
[PATCH] devfs: Remove devfs_mk_cdev() function from the kernel tree
[PATCH] devfs: Remove devfs_mk_bdev() function from the kernel tree
[PATCH] devfs: Remove devfs_mk_symlink() function from the kernel tree
[PATCH] devfs: Remove devfs_mk_dir() function from the kernel tree
[PATCH] devfs: Remove devfs_*_tape() functions from the kernel tree
[PATCH] devfs: Remove devfs support from the sound subsystem
[PATCH] devfs: Remove devfs support from the ide subsystem.
[PATCH] devfs: Remove devfs support from the serial subsystem
[PATCH] devfs: Remove devfs from the init code
[PATCH] devfs: Remove devfs from the partition code
...
* 'upstream' of git://ftp.linux-mips.org/pub/scm/upstream-linus: (33 commits)
[MIPS] Add missing backslashes to macro definitions.
[MIPS] Death list of board support to be removed after 2.6.18.
[MIPS] Remove BSD and Sys V compat data types.
[MIPS] ioc3.h: Uses u8, so include <linux/types.h>.
[MIPS] 74K: Assume it will also have an AR bit in config7
[MIPS] Treat CPUs with AR bit as physically indexed.
[MIPS] Oprofile: Support VSMP on 34K.
[MIPS] MIPS32/MIPS64 S-cache fix and cleanup
[MIPS] excite: PCI makefile needs to use += if it wants a chance to work.
[MIPS] excite: plat_setup -> plat_mem_setup.
[MIPS] au1xxx: export dbdma functions
[MIPS] au1xxx: dbdma, no sleeping under spin_lock
[MIPS] au1xxx: fix PSC_SMBTXRX_RSR.
[MIPS] Early printk for IP27.
[MIPS] Fix handling of 0 length I & D caches.
[MIPS] Typo fixes.
[MIPS] MIPS32/MIPS64 secondary cache management
[MIPS] Fix FIXADDR_TOP for TX39/TX49.
[MIPS] Remove first timer interrupt setup in wrppmc_timer_setup()
[MIPS] Fix configuration of R2 CPU features and multithreading.
...
They have been obsoleted by the ELF header EI_CLASS and EI_DATA fields
in combination with e_flags. Afaics EM_MIPS_RS3_LE and EM_MIPS_RS4_BE
never had any practical relevance. Binutils will not produce such
binaries and the kernel will not accept them as MIPS binaries.
Signed-off-by: Ralf Baechle <ralf@linux-mips.org>
* master.kernel.org:/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/gregkh/pci-2.6:
[PATCH] i386: export memory more than 4G through /proc/iomem
[PATCH] 64bit Resource: finally enable 64bit resource sizes
[PATCH] 64bit Resource: convert a few remaining drivers to use resource_size_t where needed
[PATCH] 64bit resource: change pnp core to use resource_size_t
[PATCH] 64bit resource: change pci core and arch code to use resource_size_t
[PATCH] 64bit resource: change resource core to use resource_size_t
[PATCH] 64bit resource: introduce resource_size_t for the start and end of struct resource
[PATCH] 64bit resource: fix up printks for resources in misc drivers
[PATCH] 64bit resource: fix up printks for resources in arch and core code
[PATCH] 64bit resource: fix up printks for resources in pcmcia drivers
[PATCH] 64bit resource: fix up printks for resources in video drivers
[PATCH] 64bit resource: fix up printks for resources in ide drivers
[PATCH] 64bit resource: fix up printks for resources in mtd drivers
[PATCH] 64bit resource: fix up printks for resources in pci core and hotplug drivers
[PATCH] 64bit resource: fix up printks for resources in networks drivers
[PATCH] 64bit resource: fix up printks for resources in sound drivers
[PATCH] 64bit resource: C99 changes for struct resource declarations
Fixed up trivial conflict in drivers/ide/pci/cmd64x.c (the printk that
was changed by the 64-bit resources had been deleted in the meantime ;)
Clean up the fastack concept by turning it into fasteoi and introducing the
->eoi() method for chips.
This also allows the cleanup of an i386 EOI quirk - now the quirk is
cleanly separated from the pure ACK implementation.
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Cc: Benjamin Herrenschmidt <benh@kernel.crashing.org>
Cc: Roland Dreier <rolandd@cisco.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
Add a #define for the mask of the part of IRQ_TYPE that represents the
trigger type. I use that in my in-progress work as I've standardized the
way the irq description in the firmware device-tree get translated to linux
useable things by using those constants. Having this mask to isolate the
"trigger type" part of the flags is useful in a few places.
Signed-off-by: Benjamin Herrenschmidt <benh@kernel.crashing.org>
Acked-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
Enable platforms to set the irq-wake (power-management) properties of an IRQ.
Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
Enable platforms to use the irq-chip and irq-flow abstractions: allow setting
of the chip, the type and provide highlevel handlers for common irq-flows.
[rostedt@goodmis.org: misroute-irq: Don't call desc->chip->end because of edge interrupts]
Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Cc: Benjamin Herrenschmidt <benh@kernel.crashing.org>
Signed-off-by: Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
This is a fixed up and cleaned up replacement for genirq-msi-fixes.patch,
which should solve the i386 4KSTACKS problem. I also added Ben's idea of
pushing the __do_IRQ() check into generic_handle_irq().
I booted this with MSI enabled, but i only have MSI devices, not MSI-X
devices. I'd still expect MSI-X to work now.
irqchip migration helper: call __do_IRQ() if a descriptor is attached to an
irqtype-style controller. This also fixes MSI-X IRQ handling on i386 and
x86_64.
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Cc: Benjamin Herrenschmidt <benh@kernel.crashing.org>
Cc: Roland Dreier <rolandd@cisco.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
Enable platforms to disable the automatic enabling of freshly set up irqs.
Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
Enable platforms to disable request_irq() for certain interrupts.
Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
Enable platforms that do not have a hardware-assisted hardirq-resend mechanism
to resend them via a softirq-driven IRQ emulation mechanism.
Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
Add ->retrigger() irq op to consolidate hw_irq_resend() implementations.
(Most architectures had it defined to NOP anyway.)
NOTE: ia64 needs testing. i386 and x86_64 tested.
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
Consolidation: remove the pending_irq_cpumask[NR_IRQS] array and move it into
the irq_desc[NR_IRQS].pending_mask field.
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
Consolidation: remove the irq_dir[NR_IRQS] and the smp_affinity_entry[NR_IRQS]
arrays and move them into the irq_desc[] array.
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
Small cleanups in include/linux/irq.h.
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
Cleanup: remove irq_desc_t use from the generic IRQ code, and mark it
obsolete.
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
Now that i386 defaults to regparm, explicit uses of fastcall are not needed
anymore.
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
Cleanup: remove irq_descp() - explicit use of irq_desc[] is shorter and more
readable.
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
Consolidation: remove the irq_affinity[NR_IRQS] array and move it into the
irq_desc[NR_IRQS].affinity field.
[akpm@osdl.org: sparc64 build fix]
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
This patch-queue improves the generic IRQ layer to be truly generic, by adding
various abstractions and features to it, without impacting existing
functionality.
While the queue can be best described as "fix and improve everything in the
generic IRQ layer that we could think of", and thus it consists of many
smaller features and lots of cleanups, the one feature that stands out most is
the new 'irq chip' abstraction.
The irq-chip abstraction is about describing and coding and IRQ controller
driver by mapping its raw hardware capabilities [and quirks, if needed] in a
straightforward way, without having to think about "IRQ flow"
(level/edge/etc.) type of details.
This stands in contrast with the current 'irq-type' model of genirq
architectures, which 'mixes' raw hardware capabilities with 'flow' details.
The patchset supports both types of irq controller designs at once, and
converts i386 and x86_64 to the new irq-chip design.
As a bonus side-effect of the irq-chip approach, chained interrupt controllers
(master/slave PIC constructs, etc.) are now supported by design as well.
The end result of this patchset intends to be simpler architecture-level code
and more consolidation between architectures.
We reused many bits of code and many concepts from Russell King's ARM IRQ
layer, the merging of which was one of the motivations for this patchset.
This patch:
rename desc->handler to desc->chip.
Originally i did not want to do this, because it's a big patch. But having
both "desc->handler", "desc->handle_irq" and "action->handler" caused a
large degree of confusion and made the code appear alot less clean than it
truly is.
I have also attempted a dual approach as well by introducing a
desc->chip alias - but that just wasnt robust enough and broke
frequently.
So lets get over with this quickly. The conversion was done automatically
via scripts and converts all the code in the kernel.
This renaming patch is the first one amongst the patches, so that the
remaining patches can stay flexible and can be merged and split up
without having some big monolithic patch act as a merge barrier.
[akpm@osdl.org: build fix]
[akpm@osdl.org: another build fix]
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
The TPAM isdn driver was removed in 2.6.12, but include/linux/isdn/tpam.h
was missed.
Signed-off-by: Karsten Keil <kkeil@suse.de>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
The proposed NFS key type uses its own method of passing key requests to
userspace (upcalling) rather than invoking /sbin/request-key. This is
because the responsible userspace daemon should already be running and will
be contacted through rpc_pipefs.
This patch permits the NFS filesystem to pass auxiliary data to the upcall
operation (struct key_type::request_key) so that the upcaller can use a
pre-existing communications channel more easily.
Signed-off-by: David Howells <dhowells@redhat.com>
Acked-By: Kevin Coffman <kwc@citi.umich.edu>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
plist.h uses container_of, which is defined in kernel.h.
Include kernel.h in plist.h as the kernel.h include does not longer
happen automatically on all architectures.
Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
This patch adds earlier initialization of spi_device.mode, as needed
on boards using nondefault chipselect polarity. An example would be
ones using the RS5C348 RTC without an external signal inverter between
the RTC chipselect and the SPI controller.
Without this mechanism, the first setup() call for that chip would
wrongly enable chips, corrupting transfers to/from other chips sharing
that SPI bus.
Signed-off-by: David Brownell <dbrownell@users.sourceforge.net>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
If the controller FIFO cleared automatically on error we must not try
and drain it as this will hang some chips.
Based in concept on a broken patch from -mm some while back
Signed-off-by: Alan Cox <alan@redhat.com>
Cc: Sergei Shtylyov <sshtylyov@ru.mvista.com>
Cc: Bartlomiej Zolnierkiewicz <B.Zolnierkiewicz@elka.pw.edu.pl>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
Make a 1-bit bitfield unsigned (no space for sign bit).
Removes 24 sparse warnings from this one file:
include/linux/ac97_codec.h:262:13: error: dubious one-bit signed bitfield
Signed-off-by: Randy Dunlap <rdunlap@xenotime.net>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
Remove 'active' field from tty buffer structure. This was added in 2.6.16
as part of a patch to make the new tty buffering SMP safe. This field is
unnecessary with the more intelligently written flush_to_ldisc that adds
receive_room handling.
Removing this field reverts to simpler logic where the tail buffer is
always the 'active' buffer, which should not be freed by flush_to_ldisc.
(active == buffer being filled with new data)
The result is simpler, smaller, and faster tty buffer code.
Signed-off-by: Paul Fulghum <paulkf@microgate.com>
Cc: Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>
Cc: Theodore Ts'o <tytso@mit.edu>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
Remove TTY_DONT_FLIP tty flag. This flag was introduced in 2.1.X kernels
to prevent the N_TTY line discipline functions read_chan() and
n_tty_receive_buf() from running at the same time. 2.2.15 introduced
tty->read_lock to protect access to the N_TTY read buffer, which is the
only state requiring protection between these two functions.
The current TTY_DONT_FLIP implementation is broken for SMP, and is not
universally honored by drivers that send data directly to the line
discipline receive_buf function.
Because TTY_DONT_FLIP is not necessary, is broken in implementation, and is
not universally honored, it is removed.
Signed-off-by: Paul Fulghum <paulkf@microgate.com>
Cc: Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>
Cc: Theodore Ts'o <tytso@mit.edu>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
Temporarily add EXPORT_UNUSED_SYMBOL and EXPORT_UNUSED_SYMBOL_GPL. These
will be used as a transition measure for symbols that aren't used in the
kernel and are on the way out. When a module uses such a symbol, a warning
is printk'd at modprobe time.
The main reason for removing unused exports is size: eacho export takes
roughly between 100 and 150 bytes of kernel space in the binary. This
patch gives users the option to immediately get this size gain via a config
option.
Signed-off-by: Arjan van de Ven <arjan@linux.intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
Same as with already do with the file operations: keep them in .rodata and
prevents people from doing runtime patching.
Signed-off-by: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>
Cc: Steven French <sfrench@us.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
When the priority of a task, which is blocked on a lock, changes we must
propagate this change into the PI lock chain. Therefor the chain walk code
is changed to get rid of the references to current to avoid false positives
in the deadlock detector, as setscheduler might be called by a task which
holds the lock on which the task whose priority is changed is blocked.
Also add some comments about the get/put_task_struct usage to avoid
confusion.
Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Cc: Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
This adds the actual pi-futex implementation, based on rt-mutexes.
[dino@in.ibm.com: fix an oops-causing race]
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Signed-off-by: Arjan van de Ven <arjan@linux.intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Dinakar Guniguntala <dino@in.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
RT-mutex tester: scriptable tester for rt mutexes, which allows userspace
scripting of mutex unit-tests (and dynamic tests as well), using the actual
rt-mutex implementation of the kernel.
[akpm@osdl.org: fixlet]
Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Signed-off-by: Arjan van de Ven <arjan@linux.intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
Runtime debugging functionality for rt-mutexes.
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Signed-off-by: Arjan van de Ven <arjan@linux.intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
Core functions for the rt-mutex subsystem.
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Signed-off-by: Arjan van de Ven <arjan@linux.intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
Add framework to boost/unboost the priority of RT tasks.
This consists of:
- caching the 'normal' priority in ->normal_prio
- providing a functions to set/get the priority of the task
- make sched_setscheduler() aware of boosting
The effective_prio() cleanups also fix a priority-calculation bug pointed out
by Andrey Gelman, in set_user_nice().
has_rt_policy() fix: Peter Williams <pwil3058@bigpond.net.au>
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Signed-off-by: Arjan van de Ven <arjan@linux.intel.com>
Cc: Andrey Gelman <agelman@012.net.il>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
Add the priority-sorted list (plist) implementation.
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Signed-off-by: Arjan van de Ven <arjan@linux.intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
Add debug_check_no_locks_freed(), as a central inline to add
bad-lock-free-debugging functionality to.
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Signed-off-by: Arjan van de Ven <arjan@linux.intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
We are pleased to announce "lightweight userspace priority inheritance" (PI)
support for futexes. The following patchset and glibc patch implements it,
ontop of the robust-futexes patchset which is included in 2.6.16-mm1.
We are calling it lightweight for 3 reasons:
- in the user-space fastpath a PI-enabled futex involves no kernel work
(or any other PI complexity) at all. No registration, no extra kernel
calls - just pure fast atomic ops in userspace.
- in the slowpath (in the lock-contention case), the system call and
scheduling pattern is in fact better than that of normal futexes, due to
the 'integrated' nature of FUTEX_LOCK_PI. [more about that further down]
- the in-kernel PI implementation is streamlined around the mutex
abstraction, with strict rules that keep the implementation relatively
simple: only a single owner may own a lock (i.e. no read-write lock
support), only the owner may unlock a lock, no recursive locking, etc.
Priority Inheritance - why, oh why???
-------------------------------------
Many of you heard the horror stories about the evil PI code circling Linux for
years, which makes no real sense at all and is only used by buggy applications
and which has horrible overhead. Some of you have dreaded this very moment,
when someone actually submits working PI code ;-)
So why would we like to see PI support for futexes?
We'd like to see it done purely for technological reasons. We dont think it's
a buggy concept, we think it's useful functionality to offer to applications,
which functionality cannot be achieved in other ways. We also think it's the
right thing to do, and we think we've got the right arguments and the right
numbers to prove that. We also believe that we can address all the
counter-arguments as well. For these reasons (and the reasons outlined below)
we are submitting this patch-set for upstream kernel inclusion.
What are the benefits of PI?
The short reply:
----------------
User-space PI helps achieving/improving determinism for user-space
applications. In the best-case, it can help achieve determinism and
well-bound latencies. Even in the worst-case, PI will improve the statistical
distribution of locking related application delays.
The longer reply:
-----------------
Firstly, sharing locks between multiple tasks is a common programming
technique that often cannot be replaced with lockless algorithms. As we can
see it in the kernel [which is a quite complex program in itself], lockless
structures are rather the exception than the norm - the current ratio of
lockless vs. locky code for shared data structures is somewhere between 1:10
and 1:100. Lockless is hard, and the complexity of lockless algorithms often
endangers to ability to do robust reviews of said code. I.e. critical RT
apps often choose lock structures to protect critical data structures, instead
of lockless algorithms. Furthermore, there are cases (like shared hardware,
or other resource limits) where lockless access is mathematically impossible.
Media players (such as Jack) are an example of reasonable application design
with multiple tasks (with multiple priority levels) sharing short-held locks:
for example, a highprio audio playback thread is combined with medium-prio
construct-audio-data threads and low-prio display-colory-stuff threads. Add
video and decoding to the mix and we've got even more priority levels.
So once we accept that synchronization objects (locks) are an unavoidable fact
of life, and once we accept that multi-task userspace apps have a very fair
expectation of being able to use locks, we've got to think about how to offer
the option of a deterministic locking implementation to user-space.
Most of the technical counter-arguments against doing priority inheritance
only apply to kernel-space locks. But user-space locks are different, there
we cannot disable interrupts or make the task non-preemptible in a critical
section, so the 'use spinlocks' argument does not apply (user-space spinlocks
have the same priority inversion problems as other user-space locking
constructs). Fact is, pretty much the only technique that currently enables
good determinism for userspace locks (such as futex-based pthread mutexes) is
priority inheritance:
Currently (without PI), if a high-prio and a low-prio task shares a lock [this
is a quite common scenario for most non-trivial RT applications], even if all
critical sections are coded carefully to be deterministic (i.e. all critical
sections are short in duration and only execute a limited number of
instructions), the kernel cannot guarantee any deterministic execution of the
high-prio task: any medium-priority task could preempt the low-prio task while
it holds the shared lock and executes the critical section, and could delay it
indefinitely.
Implementation:
---------------
As mentioned before, the userspace fastpath of PI-enabled pthread mutexes
involves no kernel work at all - they behave quite similarly to normal
futex-based locks: a 0 value means unlocked, and a value==TID means locked.
(This is the same method as used by list-based robust futexes.) Userspace uses
atomic ops to lock/unlock these mutexes without entering the kernel.
To handle the slowpath, we have added two new futex ops:
FUTEX_LOCK_PI
FUTEX_UNLOCK_PI
If the lock-acquire fastpath fails, [i.e. an atomic transition from 0 to TID
fails], then FUTEX_LOCK_PI is called. The kernel does all the remaining work:
if there is no futex-queue attached to the futex address yet then the code
looks up the task that owns the futex [it has put its own TID into the futex
value], and attaches a 'PI state' structure to the futex-queue. The pi_state
includes an rt-mutex, which is a PI-aware, kernel-based synchronization
object. The 'other' task is made the owner of the rt-mutex, and the
FUTEX_WAITERS bit is atomically set in the futex value. Then this task tries
to lock the rt-mutex, on which it blocks. Once it returns, it has the mutex
acquired, and it sets the futex value to its own TID and returns. Userspace
has no other work to perform - it now owns the lock, and futex value contains
FUTEX_WAITERS|TID.
If the unlock side fastpath succeeds, [i.e. userspace manages to do a TID ->
0 atomic transition of the futex value], then no kernel work is triggered.
If the unlock fastpath fails (because the FUTEX_WAITERS bit is set), then
FUTEX_UNLOCK_PI is called, and the kernel unlocks the futex on the behalf of
userspace - and it also unlocks the attached pi_state->rt_mutex and thus wakes
up any potential waiters.
Note that under this approach, contrary to other PI-futex approaches, there is
no prior 'registration' of a PI-futex. [which is not quite possible anyway,
due to existing ABI properties of pthread mutexes.]
Also, under this scheme, 'robustness' and 'PI' are two orthogonal properties
of futexes, and all four combinations are possible: futex, robust-futex,
PI-futex, robust+PI-futex.
glibc support:
--------------
Ulrich Drepper and Jakub Jelinek have written glibc support for PI-futexes
(and robust futexes), enabling robust and PI (PTHREAD_PRIO_INHERIT) POSIX
mutexes. (PTHREAD_PRIO_PROTECT support will be added later on too, no
additional kernel changes are needed for that). [NOTE: The glibc patch is
obviously inofficial and unsupported without matching upstream kernel
functionality.]
the patch-queue and the glibc patch can also be downloaded from:
http://redhat.com/~mingo/PI-futex-patches/
Many thanks go to the people who helped us create this kernel feature: Steven
Rostedt, Esben Nielsen, Benedikt Spranger, Daniel Walker, John Cooper, Arjan
van de Ven, Oleg Nesterov and others. Credits for related prior projects goes
to Dirk Grambow, Inaky Perez-Gonzalez, Bill Huey and many others.
Clean up the futex code, before adding more features to it:
- use u32 as the futex field type - that's the ABI
- use __user and pointers to u32 instead of unsigned long
- code style / comment style cleanups
- rename hash-bucket name from 'bh' to 'hb'.
I checked the pre and post futex.o object files to make sure this
patch has no code effects.
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Signed-off-by: Arjan van de Ven <arjan@linux.intel.com>
Cc: Ulrich Drepper <drepper@redhat.com>
Cc: Jakub Jelinek <jakub@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
