Re: time_after - what on earth???

[Rene Herman]

On 09/12/2007 01:09 AM, Björn Steinbrink wrote:
> On 2007.09.12 00:19:09 +0200, Rene Herman wrote:
> > On 09/12/2007 12:15 AM, Adrian McMenamin wrote:
> >
> > > On 11/09/2007, Rene Herman <rene.herman@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > > > On 09/12/2007 12:05 AM, Adrian McMenamin wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > OK, why does this line occasionally return true:
>
> What exactly is "occassionally"?  Does it happen more than once per
> boot? If not, and it happens after a certain time after booting, it
> might be wrapping of the jiffie counter (see below).
>
> > > > >       if ((maple_dev->interval > 0) && (jiffies >maple_dev->when))
> > > > >
> > > > > while this one never does (no other changes made):
> > > > >
> > > > > if  ((maple_dev->interval > 0) && (time_after(jiffies, 
> > > > > maple_dev->when)))
> > > > Is maple_dev->when an unsigned long?
> > > Yes. Does that make a difference?
> > If it had been a signed type, it could've wrapped to something you didn't 
> > expect, explaining the difference at least...
> >
> > With an unsigned long, the only diference should be that time_after() deals 
> > with jiffie wrapping which I assume is not an actual problem here. I'll 
> > retreat into the shades again... ;-(
>
> If "occasionally" is limited to once per boot, it might be jiffie
> wrapping. IIRC jiffies are initialized so that they wrap after about 5
> minutes of uptime to reveal such bugs without forcing you to wait for
> ages just to have the counter wrap for the first time.

Yes, but if jiifie wrapping was the problem, I'd expect the contrary 
behaviour with the time_after() one hitting while the > one does not.

Rene.
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