Sleep during spinlock in TPM driver

From: David Kyle
Date: Fri Apr 20 2007 - 18:11:27 EST


I've been working with the TPM driver, and I found that if I opened,
used, then closed the TPM char device very frequently, I would get a
kernel BUG message saying that the kernel tried to sleep while holding
a spinlock. I think I've isolated the problem to this function, in
drivers/char/tpm/tpm.c:

int tpm_release(struct inode *inode, struct file *file)
{
struct tpm_chip *chip = file->private_data;
spin_lock(&driver_lock);
file->private_data = NULL;
chip->num_opens--;
del_singleshot_timer_sync(&chip->user_read_timer);
flush_scheduled_work();
atomic_set(&chip->data_pending, 0);
put_device(chip->dev);
kfree(chip->data_buffer);
spin_unlock(&driver_lock);
return 0;
}
EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL(tpm_release);

I believe that flush_scheduled_work can sleep, correct? Does anyone
know why this function is called while the spinlock is held?

-David
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