Commit 97df75cd authored by Joel Fernandes (Google)'s avatar Joel Fernandes (Google) Committed by Paul E. McKenney

Revert docs from "rcu: Restore barrier() to rcu_read_lock() and rcu_read_unlock()"

This reverts docs from commit d6b9cd7dc8e041ee83cb1362fce59a3cdb1f2709.
Signed-off-by: default avatarJoel Fernandes (Google) <joel@joelfernandes.org>
[ paulmck: Added Joel's SoB per Stephen Rothwell feedback. ]
[ paulmck: Joel approved via private email. ]
Signed-off-by: default avatarPaul E. McKenney <paulmck@kernel.org>
parent 54ecb8f7
...@@ -2129,8 +2129,6 @@ Some of the relevant points of interest are as follows: ...@@ -2129,8 +2129,6 @@ Some of the relevant points of interest are as follows:
<li> <a href="#Hotplug CPU">Hotplug CPU</a>. <li> <a href="#Hotplug CPU">Hotplug CPU</a>.
<li> <a href="#Scheduler and RCU">Scheduler and RCU</a>. <li> <a href="#Scheduler and RCU">Scheduler and RCU</a>.
<li> <a href="#Tracing and RCU">Tracing and RCU</a>. <li> <a href="#Tracing and RCU">Tracing and RCU</a>.
<li> <a href="#Accesses to User Memory and RCU">
Accesses to User Memory and RCU</a>.
<li> <a href="#Energy Efficiency">Energy Efficiency</a>. <li> <a href="#Energy Efficiency">Energy Efficiency</a>.
<li> <a href="#Scheduling-Clock Interrupts and RCU"> <li> <a href="#Scheduling-Clock Interrupts and RCU">
Scheduling-Clock Interrupts and RCU</a>. Scheduling-Clock Interrupts and RCU</a>.
...@@ -2523,75 +2521,6 @@ cannot be used. ...@@ -2523,75 +2521,6 @@ cannot be used.
The tracing folks both located the requirement and provided the The tracing folks both located the requirement and provided the
needed fix, so this surprise requirement was relatively painless. needed fix, so this surprise requirement was relatively painless.
<h3><a name="Accesses to User Memory and RCU">
Accesses to User Memory and RCU</a></h3>
<p>
The kernel needs to access user-space memory, for example, to access
data referenced by system-call parameters.
The <tt>get_user()</tt> macro does this job.
<p>
However, user-space memory might well be paged out, which means
that <tt>get_user()</tt> might well page-fault and thus block while
waiting for the resulting I/O to complete.
It would be a very bad thing for the compiler to reorder
a <tt>get_user()</tt> invocation into an RCU read-side critical
section.
For example, suppose that the source code looked like this:
<blockquote>
<pre>
1 rcu_read_lock();
2 p = rcu_dereference(gp);
3 v = p-&gt;value;
4 rcu_read_unlock();
5 get_user(user_v, user_p);
6 do_something_with(v, user_v);
</pre>
</blockquote>
<p>
The compiler must not be permitted to transform this source code into
the following:
<blockquote>
<pre>
1 rcu_read_lock();
2 p = rcu_dereference(gp);
3 get_user(user_v, user_p); // BUG: POSSIBLE PAGE FAULT!!!
4 v = p-&gt;value;
5 rcu_read_unlock();
6 do_something_with(v, user_v);
</pre>
</blockquote>
<p>
If the compiler did make this transformation in a
<tt>CONFIG_PREEMPT=n</tt> kernel build, and if <tt>get_user()</tt> did
page fault, the result would be a quiescent state in the middle
of an RCU read-side critical section.
This misplaced quiescent state could result in line&nbsp;4 being
a use-after-free access, which could be bad for your kernel's
actuarial statistics.
Similar examples can be constructed with the call to <tt>get_user()</tt>
preceding the <tt>rcu_read_lock()</tt>.
<p>
Unfortunately, <tt>get_user()</tt> doesn't have any particular
ordering properties, and in some architectures the underlying <tt>asm</tt>
isn't even marked <tt>volatile</tt>.
And even if it was marked <tt>volatile</tt>, the above access to
<tt>p-&gt;value</tt> is not volatile, so the compiler would not have any
reason to keep those two accesses in order.
<p>
Therefore, the Linux-kernel definitions of <tt>rcu_read_lock()</tt>
and <tt>rcu_read_unlock()</tt> must act as compiler barriers,
at least for outermost instances of <tt>rcu_read_lock()</tt> and
<tt>rcu_read_unlock()</tt> within a nested set of RCU read-side critical
sections.
<h3><a name="Energy Efficiency">Energy Efficiency</a></h3> <h3><a name="Energy Efficiency">Energy Efficiency</a></h3>
<p> <p>
......
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