hello... Pff, sorry...I forgot...grabbing spinlock will always disables kernel preemption. So it doesn't matter whether the kernel preemption is enabled or not, process that grab spin lock in kernel mode can't be preempted. regards Mulyadi -- Kernelnewbies: Help each other learn about the Linux kernel. Archive: http://mail.nl.linux.org/kernelnewbies/ FAQ: http://kernelnewbies.org/faq/