On Wed, Sep 4, 2013 at 12:05 PM, Waiman Long <Waiman.Long@xxxxxx> wrote: > + rcu_read_unlock(); > + if (read_seqretry(&rename_lock, seq)) > + goto restart; Btw, you have this pattern twice, and while it's not necessarily incorrect, it's a bit worrisome for performance. The rcu_read_unlock() is very possibly going to trigger an immediate scheduling event, so checking the sequence lock after dropping the read-lock sounds like it would make it much easier to hit the race with some rename. I'm also a tiny bit worried about livelocking on the sequence lock in the presence of lots of renames, so I'm wondering if the locking should try to approximate what we do for the RCU lookup path: start off optimistically using just the RCU lock and a sequence point, but if that fails, fall back to taking the real lock. Maybe using a counter ("try twice, then get the rename lock for writing") Hmm? Linus -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-fsdevel" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html