On Tue, 8 Dec 2009, Rafael J. Wysocki wrote: > > Anyway, if we use an rwsem, it won't be checkable from interrupt context just > as well. You can't do a lock() from an interrupt, but the unlocks should be irq-safe. > Suppose we use rwsem and during suspend each child uses a down_read() on a > parent and then the parent uses down_write() on itself. What if, whatever the > reason, the parent is a bit early and does the down_write() before one of the > children has a chance to do the down_read()? Aren't we toast? We're toast, but we're toast for a totally unrealted reason: it means that you tried to resume a child before a parent, which would be a major bug to begin with. Look, I even wrote out the comments, so let me repeat the code one more time. - suspend time calling: // This won't block, because we suspend nodes before parents down_read(node->parent->lock); // Do the part that may block asynchronously async_schedule(do_usb_node_suspend, node); - resume time calling: // This won't block, because we resume parents before children, // and the children will take the read lock. down_write(leaf->lock); // Do the blocking part asynchronously async_schedule(usb_node_resume, leaf); See? So when we take the parent lock for suspend, we are guaranteed to do so _before_ the parent node itself suspends. And conversely, when we take the parent lock (asynchronously) for resume, we're guaranteed to do that _after_ the parent node has done its own down_write. And that all depends on just one trivial thing; that the suspend and resume is called in the right order (children first vs parent first respectively). And that is such a _major_ correctness issue that if that isn't correct, your suspend isn't going to work _anyway_. Linus -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-acpi" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html