From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from neon.transmeta.com (neon-best.transmeta.com [206.184.214.10]) by kvack.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id MAA08962 for ; Thu, 28 Jan 1999 12:55:32 -0500 Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1999 09:54:07 -0800 (PST) From: Linus Torvalds Subject: Re: [patch] fixed both processes in D state and the /proc/ oopses [Re: [patch] Fixed the race that was oopsing Linux-2.2.0] In-Reply-To: <199901281509.PAA02883@dax.scot.redhat.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-linux-mm@kvack.org To: "Stephen C. Tweedie" Cc: Andrea Arcangeli , linux-kernel@vger.rutgers.edu, werner@suse.de, mlord@pobox.com, "David S. Miller" , gandalf@szene.CH, adamk@3net.net.pl, kiracofe.8@osu.edu, ksi@ksi-linux.COM, djf-lists@ic.NET, tomh@taz.ccs.fau.edu, Alan Cox , linux-mm@kvack.org List-ID: On Thu, 28 Jan 1999, Stephen C. Tweedie wrote: > > > Do you want to know why last night I added a spinlock around mmget/mmput > > without thinking twice? Simply because mm->count was an atomic_t while it > > doesn't need to be an atomic_t in first place. > > Agreed. Incorrect, see my previous email. It may not be strictly necessary right now due to us probably holding the kernel lock everywhere, but it is conceptually necessary, and it is _not_ an argument for a spinlock. The /proc code has to be fixed, but the easy fix is to just revert to the old one as far as I can see. I shouldn't have accepted the /proc patches in the first place, and I'm sorry I did. Linus -- To unsubscribe, send a message with 'unsubscribe linux-mm my@address' in the body to majordomo@kvack.org. For more info on Linux MM, see: http://humbolt.geo.uu.nl/Linux-MM/