1SPIN_LOCK_UNLOCKED and RW_LOCK_UNLOCKED defeat lockdep state tracking and 2are hence deprecated. 3 4Please use DEFINE_SPINLOCK()/DEFINE_RWLOCK() or 5__SPIN_LOCK_UNLOCKED()/__RW_LOCK_UNLOCKED() as appropriate for static 6initialization. 7 8Most of the time, you can simply turn: 9 10 static spinlock_t xxx_lock = SPIN_LOCK_UNLOCKED; 11 12into: 13 14 static DEFINE_SPINLOCK(xxx_lock); 15 16Static structure member variables go from: 17 18 struct foo bar { 19 .lock = SPIN_LOCK_UNLOCKED; 20 }; 21 22to: 23 24 struct foo bar { 25 .lock = __SPIN_LOCK_UNLOCKED(bar.lock); 26 }; 27 28Declaration of static rw_locks undergo a similar transformation. 29 30Dynamic initialization, when necessary, may be performed as 31demonstrated below. 32 33 spinlock_t xxx_lock; 34 rwlock_t xxx_rw_lock; 35 36 static int __init xxx_init(void) 37 { 38 spin_lock_init(&xxx_lock); 39 rwlock_init(&xxx_rw_lock); 40 ... 41 } 42 43 module_init(xxx_init); 44 45The following discussion is still valid, however, with the dynamic 46initialization of spinlocks or with DEFINE_SPINLOCK, etc., used 47instead of SPIN_LOCK_UNLOCKED. 48 49----------------------- 50 51On Fri, 2 Jan 1998, Doug Ledford wrote: 52> 53> I'm working on making the aic7xxx driver more SMP friendly (as well as 54> importing the latest FreeBSD sequencer code to have 7895 support) and wanted 55> to get some info from you. The goal here is to make the various routines 56> SMP safe as well as UP safe during interrupts and other manipulating 57> routines. So far, I've added a spin_lock variable to things like my queue 58> structs. Now, from what I recall, there are some spin lock functions I can 59> use to lock these spin locks from other use as opposed to a (nasty) 60> save_flags(); cli(); stuff; restore_flags(); construct. Where do I find 61> these routines and go about making use of them? Do they only lock on a 62> per-processor basis or can they also lock say an interrupt routine from 63> mucking with a queue if the queue routine was manipulating it when the 64> interrupt occurred, or should I still use a cli(); based construct on that 65> one? 66 67See <asm/spinlock.h>. The basic version is: 68 69 spinlock_t xxx_lock = SPIN_LOCK_UNLOCKED; 70 71 72 unsigned long flags; 73 74 spin_lock_irqsave(&xxx_lock, flags); 75 ... critical section here .. 76 spin_unlock_irqrestore(&xxx_lock, flags); 77 78and the above is always safe. It will disable interrupts _locally_, but the 79spinlock itself will guarantee the global lock, so it will guarantee that 80there is only one thread-of-control within the region(s) protected by that 81lock. 82 83Note that it works well even under UP - the above sequence under UP 84essentially is just the same as doing a 85 86 unsigned long flags; 87 88 save_flags(flags); cli(); 89 ... critical section ... 90 restore_flags(flags); 91 92so the code does _not_ need to worry about UP vs SMP issues: the spinlocks 93work correctly under both (and spinlocks are actually more efficient on 94architectures that allow doing the "save_flags + cli" in one go because I 95don't export that interface normally). 96 97NOTE NOTE NOTE! The reason the spinlock is so much faster than a global 98interrupt lock under SMP is exactly because it disables interrupts only on 99the local CPU. The spin-lock is safe only when you _also_ use the lock 100itself to do locking across CPU's, which implies that EVERYTHING that 101touches a shared variable has to agree about the spinlock they want to 102use. 103 104The above is usually pretty simple (you usually need and want only one 105spinlock for most things - using more than one spinlock can make things a 106lot more complex and even slower and is usually worth it only for 107sequences that you _know_ need to be split up: avoid it at all cost if you 108aren't sure). HOWEVER, it _does_ mean that if you have some code that does 109 110 cli(); 111 .. critical section .. 112 sti(); 113 114and another sequence that does 115 116 spin_lock_irqsave(flags); 117 .. critical section .. 118 spin_unlock_irqrestore(flags); 119 120then they are NOT mutually exclusive, and the critical regions can happen 121at the same time on two different CPU's. That's fine per se, but the 122critical regions had better be critical for different things (ie they 123can't stomp on each other). 124 125The above is a problem mainly if you end up mixing code - for example the 126routines in ll_rw_block() tend to use cli/sti to protect the atomicity of 127their actions, and if a driver uses spinlocks instead then you should 128think about issues like the above.. 129 130This is really the only really hard part about spinlocks: once you start 131using spinlocks they tend to expand to areas you might not have noticed 132before, because you have to make sure the spinlocks correctly protect the 133shared data structures _everywhere_ they are used. The spinlocks are most 134easily added to places that are completely independent of other code (ie 135internal driver data structures that nobody else ever touches, for 136example). 137 138---- 139 140Lesson 2: reader-writer spinlocks. 141 142If your data accesses have a very natural pattern where you usually tend 143to mostly read from the shared variables, the reader-writer locks 144(rw_lock) versions of the spinlocks are often nicer. They allow multiple 145readers to be in the same critical region at once, but if somebody wants 146to change the variables it has to get an exclusive write lock. The 147routines look the same as above: 148 149 rwlock_t xxx_lock = RW_LOCK_UNLOCKED; 150 151 152 unsigned long flags; 153 154 read_lock_irqsave(&xxx_lock, flags); 155 .. critical section that only reads the info ... 156 read_unlock_irqrestore(&xxx_lock, flags); 157 158 write_lock_irqsave(&xxx_lock, flags); 159 .. read and write exclusive access to the info ... 160 write_unlock_irqrestore(&xxx_lock, flags); 161 162The above kind of lock is useful for complex data structures like linked 163lists etc, especially when you know that most of the work is to just 164traverse the list searching for entries without changing the list itself, 165for example. Then you can use the read lock for that kind of list 166traversal, which allows many concurrent readers. Anything that _changes_ 167the list will have to get the write lock. 168 169Note: you cannot "upgrade" a read-lock to a write-lock, so if you at _any_ 170time need to do any changes (even if you don't do it every time), you have 171to get the write-lock at the very beginning. I could fairly easily add a 172primitive to create a "upgradeable" read-lock, but it hasn't been an issue 173yet. Tell me if you'd want one. 174 175---- 176 177Lesson 3: spinlocks revisited. 178 179The single spin-lock primitives above are by no means the only ones. They 180are the most safe ones, and the ones that work under all circumstances, 181but partly _because_ they are safe they are also fairly slow. They are 182much faster than a generic global cli/sti pair, but slower than they'd 183need to be, because they do have to disable interrupts (which is just a 184single instruction on a x86, but it's an expensive one - and on other 185architectures it can be worse). 186 187If you have a case where you have to protect a data structure across 188several CPU's and you want to use spinlocks you can potentially use 189cheaper versions of the spinlocks. IFF you know that the spinlocks are 190never used in interrupt handlers, you can use the non-irq versions: 191 192 spin_lock(&lock); 193 ... 194 spin_unlock(&lock); 195 196(and the equivalent read-write versions too, of course). The spinlock will 197guarantee the same kind of exclusive access, and it will be much faster. 198This is useful if you know that the data in question is only ever 199manipulated from a "process context", ie no interrupts involved. 200 201The reasons you mustn't use these versions if you have interrupts that 202play with the spinlock is that you can get deadlocks: 203 204 spin_lock(&lock); 205 ... 206 <- interrupt comes in: 207 spin_lock(&lock); 208 209where an interrupt tries to lock an already locked variable. This is ok if 210the other interrupt happens on another CPU, but it is _not_ ok if the 211interrupt happens on the same CPU that already holds the lock, because the 212lock will obviously never be released (because the interrupt is waiting 213for the lock, and the lock-holder is interrupted by the interrupt and will 214not continue until the interrupt has been processed). 215 216(This is also the reason why the irq-versions of the spinlocks only need 217to disable the _local_ interrupts - it's ok to use spinlocks in interrupts 218on other CPU's, because an interrupt on another CPU doesn't interrupt the 219CPU that holds the lock, so the lock-holder can continue and eventually 220releases the lock). 221 222Note that you can be clever with read-write locks and interrupts. For 223example, if you know that the interrupt only ever gets a read-lock, then 224you can use a non-irq version of read locks everywhere - because they 225don't block on each other (and thus there is no dead-lock wrt interrupts. 226But when you do the write-lock, you have to use the irq-safe version. 227 228For an example of being clever with rw-locks, see the "waitqueue_lock" 229handling in kernel/sched.c - nothing ever _changes_ a wait-queue from 230within an interrupt, they only read the queue in order to know whom to 231wake up. So read-locks are safe (which is good: they are very common 232indeed), while write-locks need to protect themselves against interrupts. 233 234 Linus 235 236 237