Michael Cree said:

: : I have noticed some user space problems (pulseaudio crashes in pthread
: : code, glibc/nptl test suite failures, java compiler freezes on SMP alpha
: : systems) that arise when using a 2.6.39 or later kernel on Alpha.
: : Bisecting between 2.6.38 and 2.6.39 (using glibc/nptl test suite as
: : criterion for good/bad kernel) eventually leads to:
: :
: : 8d7718aa is the first bad commit
: : commit 8d7718aa
: : Author: Michel Lespinasse <walken@google.com>
: : Date:   Thu Mar 10 18:50:58 2011 -0800
: :
: :     futex: Sanitize futex ops argument types
: :
: :     Change futex_atomic_op_inuser and futex_atomic_cmpxchg_inatomic
: :     prototypes to use u32 types for the futex as this is the data type the
: :     futex core code uses all over the place.
: :
: : Looking at the commit I see there is a change of the uaddr argument in
: : the Alpha architecture specific code for futexes from int to u32, but I
: : don't see why this should cause a problem.

Richard Henderson said:

: futex_atomic_cmpxchg_inatomic(u32 *uval, u32 __user *uaddr,
:                               u32 oldval, u32 newval)
: ...
:         :       "r"(uaddr), "r"((long)oldval), "r"(newval)
:
:
: There is no 32-bit compare instruction.  These are implemented by
: consistently extending the values to a 64-bit type.  Since the
: load instruction sign-extends, we want to sign-extend the other
: quantity as well (despite the fact it's logically unsigned).
:
: So:
:
: -        :       "r"(uaddr), "r"((long)oldval), "r"(newval)
: +        :       "r"(uaddr), "r"((long)(int)oldval), "r"(newval)
:
: should do the trick.

Michael said:

: This fixes the glibc test suite failures and the pulseaudio related
: crashes, but it does not fix the java compiiler lockups that I was (and
: are still) observing.  That is some other problem.
Reported-by: Michael Cree <mcree@orcon.net.nz>
Tested-by: Michael Cree <mcree@orcon.net.nz>
Acked-by: Phil Carmody <ext-phil.2.carmody@nokia.com>
Cc: Richard Henderson <rth@twiddle.net>
Cc: Michel Lespinasse <walken@google.com>
Cc: Ivan Kokshaysky <ink@jurassic.park.msu.ru>
Reviewed-by: Matt Turner <mattst88@gmail.com>
Cc: <stable@vger.kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>