Hello! In the process of writing up the mechanical proof of correctness for the dynticks/preemptable-RCU interface, I noticed misplaced memory barriers in rcu_enter_nohz() and rcu_exit_nohz(). This patch puts them in the right place and adds a comment. The key thing to keep in mind is that rcu_enter_nohz() is -exiting- the mode that can legally execute RCU read-side critical sections. The memory barrier must be between any potential RCU read-side critical sections and the increment of the per-CPU dynticks_progress_counter, and thus must come -before- this increment. And vice versa for rcu_exit_nohz(). The locking in the scheduler is probably saving us for the moment. Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> --- rcupreempt.h | 4 ++-- 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) diff -urpNa -X dontdiff linux-2.6.25-rc6/include/linux/rcupreempt.h linux-2.6.25-rc6-rcu_nohz-fix/include/linux/rcupreempt.h --- linux-2.6.25-rc6/include/linux/rcupreempt.h 2008-03-16 17:45:16.000000000 -0700 +++ linux-2.6.25-rc6-rcu_nohz-fix/include/linux/rcupreempt.h 2008-03-16 17:59:24.000000000 -0700 @@ -87,15 +87,15 @@ DECLARE_PER_CPU(long, dynticks_progress_ static inline void rcu_enter_nohz(void) { + mb(); /* CPUs seeing ++ must see prior RCU read-side crit sects */ __get_cpu_var(dynticks_progress_counter)++; WARN_ON(__get_cpu_var(dynticks_progress_counter) & 0x1); - mb(); } static inline void rcu_exit_nohz(void) { - mb(); __get_cpu_var(dynticks_progress_counter)++; + mb(); /* CPUs seeing ++ must see subsequent RCU read-side crit sects */ WARN_ON(!(__get_cpu_var(dynticks_progress_counter) & 0x1)); } -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-rt-users" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html