On Mon, Oct 29, 2012 at 06:03:42PM -0700, George Zhang wrote:
> +/*
> + * Releases the VMCI context. If this is the last reference to
> + * the context it will be deallocated. A context is created with
> + * a reference count of one, and on destroy, it is removed from
> + * the context list before its reference count is
> + * decremented. Thus, if we reach zero, we are sure that nobody
> + * else are about to increment it (they need the entry in the
> + * context list for that). This function musn't be called with a
> + * lock held.
> + */
> +void vmci_ctx_release(struct vmci_ctx *context)
> +{
> + ASSERT(context);
> + kref_put(&context->kref, ctx_free_ctx);
> +}
> +
Hm, are you _sure_ you should be calling this without a lock held?
That's usually kref-101, you MUST hold a lock when calling put,
otherwise you can race a kref_get() call, and all hell can break loose.
Because of this, some saner people (like Al Viro), have suggested that I
force the kref_put() and kref_get() calls pass in a spinlock just to
enforce this.
So, tell me what I'm missing here, and why you put the comment here
saying that it really is supposed to be called without a lock held? How
is that safe?
confused,
greg k-h
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