Subject: Re: [RFC net-next-2.6] can: replace spinlocks with mutexes

From: Oliver Hartkopp <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2011 15:00:45 +0200

On 20.04.2011 17:39, Eric Dumazet wrote:
> Le mercredi 20 avril 2011 à 17:31 +0200, Oliver Hartkopp a écrit :
>> This patch removes spinlocks for the CAN netdevice specific receive lists.
>> The RCU-based receive lists can be modified from process context or from the
>> netdevice notifier call. As both might sleep we can safely replace the
>> spinlocks with mutexes.
>>
>> Signed-off-by: Oliver Hartkopp <[email-masked]>
>>
>> ---
> 
> But... why ?
> 
> A spinlock is faster/smaller than a mutex.
> 
> Maybe you wanted to _remove_ spinlock, since/if writer hold RTNL and
> doesnt need to exclude another writer(s) ?
> 
> Note : I did not check the RTNL assertion, you might add appropriate
> ASSERT_RTNL() calls just to be 100% safe.
> 

I played a bit with rtnl locks but ran into problems with a lock sock when
enabling all locking debug techniques. Therefore i pull back my RFC for now
and leave the locking using spinlocks as-is.

Thanks,
Oliver