Subject: Re: [PATCH net-next] neigh: Add missing rcu_assign_pointer

From: Ying Xue <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 May 2015 09:21:44 +0800

On 05/28/2015 06:13 PM, Eric Dumazet wrote:
> This patch is not needed.
> 
> You really should read Documentation/RCU , because it looks like you are
> quite confused.
> 
> When we remove an element from a RCU protected list, all the objects in
> the chain are already ready to be caught by rcu readers.
> 
> Therefore, no additional memory barrier is needed before doing *np =
> n->next;
> 
> Please do not add spurious memory barriers. Like atomic operations, we
> want all of them being required and possibly documented.

Yes, you are right, thanks for your clear explanation :)
However, there are still three places where we use rcu_assign_pointer() to
remove a neigh entry from a RCU-protected list, and the three places are
neigh_forced_gc(), neigh_flush_dev(), and __neigh_for_each_release()
respectively. This means it's redundant for us to use rcu_assign_pointer() in
the three places, right?

Regards,
Ying