On 03/21/2011 12:02 PM, Alan Cox wrote: >> Anyway is the test needed at all? I.e. could >> tty->ops->write/chars_in_buffer/ntty_write_room be called with >> port->port.count == 0 at all? > > I'm not entirely sure what the Nozomi driver is trying to do. Generally > any case a driver is looking at port->port.count it's a bug and should > not matter with the tty krefs. However the chances are it should be > testing *something* instead in this case. Well, I looked into the history of the driver and into the driver itself. What I've found out is: * tty_sem is useless now. It was used to protect port->tty_open_count which was later switched to port->port.count. The lock should have been switched to port->lock at that time too. * the port->port.count == 0 tests are an illusion of protection against race with hup. IOW both of them are crap nowadays. The former doesn't protect anything, the latter is not protected by anything. What is the proper way to avoid a race with HUP in tty->ops->write, chars_in_buffer, ntty_write_room and possibly others? I looked into the drivers, moxa tests tty->driver_data (why? [1]), mxser does nothing as well as rocket and many others. What is the reference driver I should look into? [1] Perhaps leftover from when moxa_shutdown used to NULL it. I don't see why the driver should care at all. It has a tty, tty->driver_data and thus all the HW info. So it should ignore the race, i.e. test nothing, right? thanks, -- js suse labs -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-ppp" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html