- 27 Mar, 2006 40 commits
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Bjorn Helgaas authored
Remove the assumption that pnp_register_card_driver() returns the number of devices claimed. And fix some __init/__devinit issues. Signed-off-by: Bjorn Helgaas <bjorn.helgaas@hp.com> Cc: Adam Belay <ambx1@neo.rr.com> Cc: Jaroslav Kysela <perex@suse.cz> Acked-by: Takashi Iwai <tiwai@suse.de> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
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Bjorn Helgaas authored
Remove the assumption that pnp_register_card_driver() returns the number of devices claimed. Signed-off-by: Bjorn Helgaas <bjorn.helgaas@hp.com> Cc: Adam Belay <ambx1@neo.rr.com> Cc: Jaroslav Kysela <perex@suse.cz> Acked-by: Takashi Iwai <tiwai@suse.de> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
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Bjorn Helgaas authored
Remove the assumption that pnp_register_card_driver() returns the number of devices claimed. And fix some __init/__devinit issues. Signed-off-by: Bjorn Helgaas <bjorn.helgaas@hp.com> Cc: Adam Belay <ambx1@neo.rr.com> Cc: Jaroslav Kysela <perex@suse.cz> Acked-by: Takashi Iwai <tiwai@suse.de> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
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Bjorn Helgaas authored
Remove the assumption that pnp_register_card_driver() returns the number of devices claimed. Signed-off-by: Bjorn Helgaas <bjorn.helgaas@hp.com> Cc: Adam Belay <ambx1@neo.rr.com> Cc: Jaroslav Kysela <perex@suse.cz> Acked-by: Takashi Iwai <tiwai@suse.de> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
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Bjorn Helgaas authored
Remove the assumption that pnp_register_card_driver() returns the number of devices claimed. And fix a __init/__devinit issue. Signed-off-by: Bjorn Helgaas <bjorn.helgaas@hp.com> Cc: Adam Belay <ambx1@neo.rr.com> Cc: Jaroslav Kysela <perex@suse.cz> Acked-by: Takashi Iwai <tiwai@suse.de> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
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Bjorn Helgaas authored
Remove the assumption that pnp_register_card_driver() returns the number of devices claimed. Signed-off-by: Bjorn Helgaas <bjorn.helgaas@hp.com> Cc: Adam Belay <ambx1@neo.rr.com> Cc: Jaroslav Kysela <perex@suse.cz> Acked-by: Takashi Iwai <tiwai@suse.de> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
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Bjorn Helgaas authored
Remove the assumption that pnp_register_driver() returns the number of devices claimed. Returning the count is unreliable because devices may be hot-plugged in the future. This changes the convention to "zero for success, or a negative error value," which matches pci_register_driver(), acpi_bus_register_driver(), and platform_driver_register(). Signed-off-by: Bjorn Helgaas <bjorn.helgaas@hp.com> Cc: Adam Belay <ambx1@neo.rr.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
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Bjorn Helgaas authored
Remove the assumption that pnp_register_driver() returns the number of devices claimed. Signed-off-by: Bjorn Helgaas <bjorn.helgaas@hp.com> Cc: Adam Belay <ambx1@neo.rr.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
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Bjorn Helgaas authored
Remove the assumption that pnp_register_driver() returns the number of devices claimed. Signed-off-by: Bjorn Helgaas <bjorn.helgaas@hp.com> Cc: Adam Belay <ambx1@neo.rr.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
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Bjorn Helgaas authored
Remove the assumption that pnp_register_driver() returns the number of devices claimed. Signed-off-by: Bjorn Helgaas <bjorn.helgaas@hp.com> Cc: Adam Belay <ambx1@neo.rr.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
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Bjorn Helgaas authored
Remove the assumption that pnp_register_driver() returns the number of devices claimed. Signed-off-by: Bjorn Helgaas <bjorn.helgaas@hp.com> Cc: Adam Belay <ambx1@neo.rr.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
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Bjorn Helgaas authored
This series of patches removes the assumption that pnp_register_driver() returns the number of devices claimed. Returning the count is unreliable because devices may be hot-plugged in the future. (Many devices don't support hot-plug, of course, but PNP in general does.) This changes the convention to "zero for success, or a negative error value," which matches pci_register_driver(), acpi_bus_register_driver(), and platform_driver_register(). If drivers need to know the number of devices, they can count calls to their .probe() methods. This patch: Remove the assumption that pnp_register_driver() returns the number of devices claimed. Signed-off-by: Bjorn Helgaas <bjorn.helgaas@hp.com> Cc: Adam Belay <ambx1@neo.rr.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
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Bjorn Helgaas authored
Remove the assumption that pnp_register_driver() returns the number of devices claimed. parport_pc_init() does nothing with "count", so remove it. Then nobody uses the return value of parport_pc_find_ports(), so make it void. Finally, update pnp_register_driver() usage. Signed-off-by: Bjorn Helgaas <bjorn.helgaas@hp.com> Cc: Adam Belay <ambx1@neo.rr.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
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Alessandro Zummo authored
Add a driver for the ST M48T86 / Dallas DS12887 RTC. This is a platform driver. The platform device must provide I/O routines to access the RTC. Signed-off-by: Alessandro Zummo <a.zummo@towertech.it> Cc: Greg KH <greg@kroah.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
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Richard Purdie authored
Add an RTC subsystem driver for the ARM SA1100/PXA2XX processor RTC. Signed-off-by: Richard Purdie <rpurdie@rpsys.net> Signed-off-by: Alessandro Zummo <a.zummo@towertech.it> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
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Alessandro Zummo authored
This patch adds a driver for the RTC embedded in the Cirrus Logic EP93XX family of processors. Signed-off-by: Alessandro Zummo <a.zummo@towertech.it> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
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Alessandro Zummo authored
RTC class aware driver for the Ricoh RS5C372 chip used, among others, on the Synology DS101. Signed-off-by: Alessandro Zummo <a.zummo@towertech.it> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
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Alessandro Zummo authored
An RTC class aware driver for the Philips PCF8563 RTC and Epson RTC8564 chips. This chip is used on the Iomega NAS100D. Signed-off-by: Alessandro Zummo <a.zummo@towertech.it> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
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Alessandro Zummo authored
Driver for the Dallas/Maxim DS1672 chip, found on the Loft (http://www.giantshoulderinc.com). Signed-off-by: Alessandro Zummo <a.zummo@towertech.it> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
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Alessandro Zummo authored
Interrupts can be generated by echo "alarm|tick|update" >/sys/class/rtc/rtcX/device/irq Signed-off-by: Alessandro Zummo <a.zummo@towertech.it> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
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Alessandro Zummo authored
A port of the existing x1205 driver under the new RTC subsystem. It is actually under test within the NSLU2 project (http://www.nslu2-linux.org) and it is working quite well. It is the first driver under this new subsystem and should be used as a guide to port other drivers. Signed-off-by: Alessandro Zummo <a.zummo@towertech.it> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
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Alessandro Zummo authored
Add the dev interface to the RTC subsystem. Each RTC will be available under /dev/rtcX . A symlink from /dev/rtc0 to /dev/rtc cab be obtained with the following udev rule: KERNEL=="rtc0", SYMLINK+="rtc" Signed-off-by: Alessandro Zummo <a.zummo@towertech.it> Acked-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@suse.de> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
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Alessandro Zummo authored
Add the proc interface to the RTC subsystem. The first RTC driver which registers with the class will be accessible by /proc/driver/rtc . This is required for compatibility with the standard RTC driver and to avoid breaking any user space application which may erroneusly rely on this. Signed-off-by: Alessandro Zummo <a.zummo@towertech.it> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
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Alessandro Zummo authored
This patch adds the sysfs interface to the RTC subsystem. Each RTC client will have his own entry under /sys/classs/rtc/rtcN . Within this entry some attributes are exported by the subsystem, like date and time. Signed-off-by: Alessandro Zummo <a.zummo@towertech.it> Acked-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@suse.de> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
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Alessandro Zummo authored
This patch adds the I2C driver ids to i2c-id.h in preparation of the I2C direct probing method. This is kept separate so that it can be integrated to Signed-off-by: Alessandro Zummo <a.zummo@towertech.it> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
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Alessandro Zummo authored
This patch, completely optional, removes from drivers/i2c/chips all the drivers that are implemented in the new RTC subsystem. It should be noted that none of the current driver is actually integrated, i.e. usable without further patches. Signed-off-by: Alessandro Zummo <a.zummo@towertech.it> Acked-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@suse.de> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
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Alessandro Zummo authored
Add the basic RTC subsystem infrastructure to the kernel. rtc/class.c - registration facilities for RTC drivers rtc/interface.c - kernel/rtc interface functions rtc/hctosys.c - snippet of code that copies hw clock to sw clock at bootup, if configured to do so. Signed-off-by: Alessandro Zummo <a.zummo@towertech.it> Acked-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@suse.de> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
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Richard Purdie authored
Fix some namespace conflicts between the RTC subsystem and the ARM Integrator time functions. Signed-off-by: Richard Purdie <rpurdie@rpsys.net> Signed-off-by: Alessandro Zummo <a.zummo@towertech.it> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
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Alessandro Zummo authored
This patch removes from the ARM subsytem some of the rtc-related functions that have been included in the RTC subsystem. It also fixes some naming collisions. Signed-off-by: Alessandro Zummo <a.zummo@towertech.it> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
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Alessandro Zummo authored
RTC and date/time related functions. Signed-off-by: Alessandro Zummo <a.zummo@towertech.it> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
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Yoichi Yuasa authored
Fix the collision of rtc function name. Signed-off-by: Yoichi Yuasa <yoichi_yuasa@tripeaks.co.jp> Cc: Alessandro Zummo <a.zummo@towertech.it> Cc: Ralf Baechle <ralf@linux-mips.org> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
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Alan Stern authored
The kernel's implementation of notifier chains is unsafe. There is no protection against entries being added to or removed from a chain while the chain is in use. The issues were discussed in this thread: http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=113018709002036&w=2 We noticed that notifier chains in the kernel fall into two basic usage classes: "Blocking" chains are always called from a process context and the callout routines are allowed to sleep; "Atomic" chains can be called from an atomic context and the callout routines are not allowed to sleep. We decided to codify this distinction and make it part of the API. Therefore this set of patches introduces three new, parallel APIs: one for blocking notifiers, one for atomic notifiers, and one for "raw" notifiers (which is really just the old API under a new name). New kinds of data structures are used for the heads of the chains, and new routines are defined for registration, unregistration, and calling a chain. The three APIs are explained in include/linux/notifier.h and their implementation is in kernel/sys.c. With atomic and blocking chains, the implementation guarantees that the chain links will not be corrupted and that chain callers will not get messed up by entries being added or removed. For raw chains the implementation provides no guarantees at all; users of this API must provide their own protections. (The idea was that situations may come up where the assumptions of the atomic and blocking APIs are not appropriate, so it should be possible for users to handle these things in their own way.) There are some limitations, which should not be too hard to live with. For atomic/blocking chains, registration and unregistration must always be done in a process context since the chain is protected by a mutex/rwsem. Also, a callout routine for a non-raw chain must not try to register or unregister entries on its own chain. (This did happen in a couple of places and the code had to be changed to avoid it.) Since atomic chains may be called from within an NMI handler, they cannot use spinlocks for synchronization. Instead we use RCU. The overhead falls almost entirely in the unregister routine, which is okay since unregistration is much less frequent that calling a chain. Here is the list of chains that we adjusted and their classifications. None of them use the raw API, so for the moment it is only a placeholder. ATOMIC CHAINS ------------- arch/i386/kernel/traps.c: i386die_chain arch/ia64/kernel/traps.c: ia64die_chain arch/powerpc/kernel/traps.c: powerpc_die_chain arch/sparc64/kernel/traps.c: sparc64die_chain arch/x86_64/kernel/traps.c: die_chain drivers/char/ipmi/ipmi_si_intf.c: xaction_notifier_list kernel/panic.c: panic_notifier_list kernel/profile.c: task_free_notifier net/bluetooth/hci_core.c: hci_notifier net/ipv4/netfilter/ip_conntrack_core.c: ip_conntrack_chain net/ipv4/netfilter/ip_conntrack_core.c: ip_conntrack_expect_chain net/ipv6/addrconf.c: inet6addr_chain net/netfilter/nf_conntrack_core.c: nf_conntrack_chain net/netfilter/nf_conntrack_core.c: nf_conntrack_expect_chain net/netlink/af_netlink.c: netlink_chain BLOCKING CHAINS --------------- arch/powerpc/platforms/pseries/reconfig.c: pSeries_reconfig_chain arch/s390/kernel/process.c: idle_chain arch/x86_64/kernel/process.c idle_notifier drivers/base/memory.c: memory_chain drivers/cpufreq/cpufreq.c cpufreq_policy_notifier_list drivers/cpufreq/cpufreq.c cpufreq_transition_notifier_list drivers/macintosh/adb.c: adb_client_list drivers/macintosh/via-pmu.c sleep_notifier_list drivers/macintosh/via-pmu68k.c sleep_notifier_list drivers/macintosh/windfarm_core.c wf_client_list drivers/usb/core/notify.c usb_notifier_list drivers/video/fbmem.c fb_notifier_list kernel/cpu.c cpu_chain kernel/module.c module_notify_list kernel/profile.c munmap_notifier kernel/profile.c task_exit_notifier kernel/sys.c reboot_notifier_list net/core/dev.c netdev_chain net/decnet/dn_dev.c: dnaddr_chain net/ipv4/devinet.c: inetaddr_chain It's possible that some of these classifications are wrong. If they are, please let us know or submit a patch to fix them. Note that any chain that gets called very frequently should be atomic, because the rwsem read-locking used for blocking chains is very likely to incur cache misses on SMP systems. (However, if the chain's callout routines may sleep then the chain cannot be atomic.) The patch set was written by Alan Stern and Chandra Seetharaman, incorporating material written by Keith Owens and suggestions from Paul McKenney and Andrew Morton. [jes@sgi.com: restructure the notifier chain initialization macros] Signed-off-by: Alan Stern <stern@rowland.harvard.edu> Signed-off-by: Chandra Seetharaman <sekharan@us.ibm.com> Signed-off-by: Jes Sorensen <jes@sgi.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
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Ingo Molnar authored
futex.h updates: - get rid of FUTEX_OWNER_PENDING - it's not used - reduce ROBUST_LIST_LIMIT to a saner value Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
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Ingo Molnar authored
- fix: initialize the robust list(s) to NULL in copy_process. - doc update - cleanup: rename _inuser to _inatomic - __user cleanups and other small cleanups Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu> Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de> Cc: Arjan van de Ven <arjan@infradead.org> Cc: Ulrich Drepper <drepper@redhat.com> Cc: Andi Kleen <ak@muc.de> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
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Ingo Molnar authored
x86_64: add the futex_atomic_cmpxchg_inuser() assembly implementation, and wire up the new syscalls. Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu> Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de> Signed-off-by: Arjan van de Ven <arjan@infradead.org> Acked-by: Ulrich Drepper <drepper@redhat.com> Cc: Andi Kleen <ak@muc.de> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
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Ingo Molnar authored
i386: add the futex_atomic_cmpxchg_inuser() assembly implementation, and wire up the new syscalls. Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu> Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de> Signed-off-by: Arjan van de Ven <arjan@infradead.org> Acked-by: Ulrich Drepper <drepper@redhat.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
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Ingo Molnar authored
32-bit syscall compatibility support. (This patch also moves all futex related compat functionality into kernel/futex_compat.c.) Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu> Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de> Signed-off-by: Arjan van de Ven <arjan@infradead.org> Acked-by: Ulrich Drepper <drepper@redhat.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
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Ingo Molnar authored
Add robust-futex documentation. Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
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Ingo Molnar authored
Add the core infrastructure for robust futexes: structure definitions, the new syscalls and the do_exit() based cleanup mechanism. Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu> Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de> Signed-off-by: Arjan van de Ven <arjan@infradead.org> Acked-by: Ulrich Drepper <drepper@redhat.com> Cc: Michael Kerrisk <mtk-manpages@gmx.net> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
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Ingo Molnar authored
This patchset provides a new (written from scratch) implementation of robust futexes, called "lightweight robust futexes". We believe this new implementation is faster and simpler than the vma-based robust futex solutions presented before, and we'd like this patchset to be adopted in the upstream kernel. This is version 1 of the patchset. Background ---------- What are robust futexes? To answer that, we first need to understand what futexes are: normal futexes are special types of locks that in the noncontended case can be acquired/released from userspace without having to enter the kernel. A futex is in essence a user-space address, e.g. a 32-bit lock variable field. If userspace notices contention (the lock is already owned and someone else wants to grab it too) then the lock is marked with a value that says "there's a waiter pending", and the sys_futex(FUTEX_WAIT) syscall is used to wait for the other guy to release it. The kernel creates a 'futex queue' internally, so that it can later on match up the waiter with the waker - without them having to know about each other. When the owner thread releases the futex, it notices (via the variable value) that there were waiter(s) pending, and does the sys_futex(FUTEX_WAKE) syscall to wake them up. Once all waiters have taken and released the lock, the futex is again back to 'uncontended' state, and there's no in-kernel state associated with it. The kernel completely forgets that there ever was a futex at that address. This method makes futexes very lightweight and scalable. "Robustness" is about dealing with crashes while holding a lock: if a process exits prematurely while holding a pthread_mutex_t lock that is also shared with some other process (e.g. yum segfaults while holding a pthread_mutex_t, or yum is kill -9-ed), then waiters for that lock need to be notified that the last owner of the lock exited in some irregular way. To solve such types of problems, "robust mutex" userspace APIs were created: pthread_mutex_lock() returns an error value if the owner exits prematurely - and the new owner can decide whether the data protected by the lock can be recovered safely. There is a big conceptual problem with futex based mutexes though: it is the kernel that destroys the owner task (e.g. due to a SEGFAULT), but the kernel cannot help with the cleanup: if there is no 'futex queue' (and in most cases there is none, futexes being fast lightweight locks) then the kernel has no information to clean up after the held lock! Userspace has no chance to clean up after the lock either - userspace is the one that crashes, so it has no opportunity to clean up. Catch-22. In practice, when e.g. yum is kill -9-ed (or segfaults), a system reboot is needed to release that futex based lock. This is one of the leading bugreports against yum. To solve this problem, 'Robust Futex' patches were created and presented on lkml: the one written by Todd Kneisel and David Singleton is the most advanced at the moment. These patches all tried to extend the futex abstraction by registering futex-based locks in the kernel - and thus give the kernel a chance to clean up. E.g. in David Singleton's robust-futex-6.patch, there are 3 new syscall variants to sys_futex(): FUTEX_REGISTER, FUTEX_DEREGISTER and FUTEX_RECOVER. The kernel attaches such robust futexes to vmas (via vma->vm_file->f_mapping->robust_head), and at do_exit() time, all vmas are searched to see whether they have a robust_head set. Lots of work went into the vma-based robust-futex patch, and recently it has improved significantly, but unfortunately it still has two fundamental problems left: - they have quite complex locking and race scenarios. The vma-based patches had been pending for years, but they are still not completely reliable. - they have to scan _every_ vma at sys_exit() time, per thread! The second disadvantage is a real killer: pthread_exit() takes around 1 microsecond on Linux, but with thousands (or tens of thousands) of vmas every pthread_exit() takes a millisecond or more, also totally destroying the CPU's L1 and L2 caches! This is very much noticeable even for normal process sys_exit_group() calls: the kernel has to do the vma scanning unconditionally! (this is because the kernel has no knowledge about how many robust futexes there are to be cleaned up, because a robust futex might have been registered in another task, and the futex variable might have been simply mmap()-ed into this process's address space). This huge overhead forced the creation of CONFIG_FUTEX_ROBUST, but worse than that: the overhead makes robust futexes impractical for any type of generic Linux distribution. So it became clear to us, something had to be done. Last week, when Thomas Gleixner tried to fix up the vma-based robust futex patch in the -rt tree, he found a handful of new races and we were talking about it and were analyzing the situation. At that point a fundamentally different solution occured to me. This patchset (written in the past couple of days) implements that new solution. Be warned though - the patchset does things we normally dont do in Linux, so some might find the approach disturbing. Parental advice recommended ;-) New approach to robust futexes ------------------------------ At the heart of this new approach there is a per-thread private list of robust locks that userspace is holding (maintained by glibc) - which userspace list is registered with the kernel via a new syscall [this registration happens at most once per thread lifetime]. At do_exit() time, the kernel checks this user-space list: are there any robust futex locks to be cleaned up? In the common case, at do_exit() time, there is no list registered, so the cost of robust futexes is just a simple current->robust_list != NULL comparison. If the thread has registered a list, then normally the list is empty. If the thread/process crashed or terminated in some incorrect way then the list might be non-empty: in this case the kernel carefully walks the list [not trusting it], and marks all locks that are owned by this thread with the FUTEX_OWNER_DEAD bit, and wakes up one waiter (if any). The list is guaranteed to be private and per-thread, so it's lockless. There is one race possible though: since adding to and removing from the list is done after the futex is acquired by glibc, there is a few instructions window for the thread (or process) to die there, leaving the futex hung. To protect against this possibility, userspace (glibc) also maintains a simple per-thread 'list_op_pending' field, to allow the kernel to clean up if the thread dies after acquiring the lock, but just before it could have added itself to the list. Glibc sets this list_op_pending field before it tries to acquire the futex, and clears it after the list-add (or list-remove) has finished. That's all that is needed - all the rest of robust-futex cleanup is done in userspace [just like with the previous patches]. Ulrich Drepper has implemented the necessary glibc support for this new mechanism, which fully enables robust mutexes. (Ulrich plans to commit these changes to glibc-HEAD later today.) Key differences of this userspace-list based approach, compared to the vma based method: - it's much, much faster: at thread exit time, there's no need to loop over every vma (!), which the VM-based method has to do. Only a very simple 'is the list empty' op is done. - no VM changes are needed - 'struct address_space' is left alone. - no registration of individual locks is needed: robust mutexes dont need any extra per-lock syscalls. Robust mutexes thus become a very lightweight primitive - so they dont force the application designer to do a hard choice between performance and robustness - robust mutexes are just as fast. - no per-lock kernel allocation happens. - no resource limits are needed. - no kernel-space recovery call (FUTEX_RECOVER) is needed. - the implementation and the locking is "obvious", and there are no interactions with the VM. Performance ----------- I have benchmarked the time needed for the kernel to process a list of 1 million (!) held locks, using the new method [on a 2GHz CPU]: - with FUTEX_WAIT set [contended mutex]: 130 msecs - without FUTEX_WAIT set [uncontended mutex]: 30 msecs I have also measured an approach where glibc does the lock notification [which it currently does for !pshared robust mutexes], and that took 256 msecs - clearly slower, due to the 1 million FUTEX_WAKE syscalls userspace had to do. (1 million held locks are unheard of - we expect at most a handful of locks to be held at a time. Nevertheless it's nice to know that this approach scales nicely.) Implementation details ---------------------- The patch adds two new syscalls: one to register the userspace list, and one to query the registered list pointer: asmlinkage long sys_set_robust_list(struct robust_list_head __user *head, size_t len); asmlinkage long sys_get_robust_list(int pid, struct robust_list_head __user **head_ptr, size_t __user *len_ptr); List registration is very fast: the pointer is simply stored in current->robust_list. [Note that in the future, if robust futexes become widespread, we could extend sys_clone() to register a robust-list head for new threads, without the need of another syscall.] So there is virtually zero overhead for tasks not using robust futexes, and even for robust futex users, there is only one extra syscall per thread lifetime, and the cleanup operation, if it happens, is fast and straightforward. The kernel doesnt have any internal distinction between robust and normal futexes. If a futex is found to be held at exit time, the kernel sets the highest bit of the futex word: #define FUTEX_OWNER_DIED 0x40000000 and wakes up the next futex waiter (if any). User-space does the rest of the cleanup. Otherwise, robust futexes are acquired by glibc by putting the TID into the futex field atomically. Waiters set the FUTEX_WAITERS bit: #define FUTEX_WAITERS 0x80000000 and the remaining bits are for the TID. Testing, architecture support ----------------------------- I've tested the new syscalls on x86 and x86_64, and have made sure the parsing of the userspace list is robust [ ;-) ] even if the list is deliberately corrupted. i386 and x86_64 syscalls are wired up at the moment, and Ulrich has tested the new glibc code (on x86_64 and i386), and it works for his robust-mutex testcases. All other architectures should build just fine too - but they wont have the new syscalls yet. Architectures need to implement the new futex_atomic_cmpxchg_inuser() inline function before writing up the syscalls (that function returns -ENOSYS right now). This patch: Add placeholder futex_atomic_cmpxchg_inuser() implementations to every architecture that supports futexes. It returns -ENOSYS. Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu> Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de> Signed-off-by: Arjan van de Ven <arjan@infradead.org> Acked-by: Ulrich Drepper <drepper@redhat.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
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