On Mon, Sep 21, 2015 at 03:03:48PM +0200, Petr Mladek wrote: > /** > + * try_to_grab_pending_kthread_work - steal kthread work item from worklist, > + * and disable irq > + * @work: work item to steal > + * @is_dwork: @work is a delayed_work > + * @flags: place to store irq state > + * > + * Try to grab PENDING bit of @work. This function can handle @work in any > + * stable state - idle, on timer or on worklist. > + * > + * Return: > + * 1 if @work was pending and we successfully stole PENDING > + * 0 if @work was idle and we claimed PENDING > + * -EAGAIN if PENDING couldn't be grabbed at the moment, safe to busy-retry > + * -ENOENT if someone else is canceling @work, this state may persist > + * for arbitrarily long > + * > + * Note: > + * On >= 0 return, the caller owns @work's PENDING bit. To avoid getting > + * interrupted while holding PENDING and @work off queue, irq must be > + * disabled on return. This, combined with delayed_work->timer being > + * irqsafe, ensures that we return -EAGAIN for finite short period of time. > + * > + * On successful return, >= 0, irq is disabled and the caller is > + * responsible for releasing it using local_irq_restore(*@flags). > + * > + * This function is safe to call from any context including IRQ handler. > + */ Ugh... I think this is way too much for kthread_worker. Workqueue is as complex as it is partly for historical reasons and partly because it's used so widely and heavily. kthread_worker is always guaranteed to have a single worker and in most cases maybe several work items. There's no reason to bring this level of complexity onto it. Providing simliar semantics is fine but it should be possible to do this in a lot simpler way if the requirements on space and concurrency is this much lower. e.g. always embed timer_list in a work item and use per-worker spinlock to synchronize access to both the work item and timer and use per-work-item mutex to synchronize multiple cancelers. Let's please keep it simple. Thanks. -- tejun -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-api" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html