Re: use of preempt_count instead of in_atomic() at leds-gpio.c

From: Andrew Morton
Date: Tue Mar 18 2008 - 03:15:41 EST


On Sun, 16 Mar 2008 11:46:23 -0800 David Brownell <david-b@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> On Sunday 16 March 2008, Henrique de Moraes Holschuh wrote:
> > Is the use of "if (preempt_count())" to know when to defer led gpio work to
> > a workqueue needed? __Shouldn't "if (in_atomic())" be enough?
>
> At this point, I don't know of any such reason.
>
> I remember hunting for the right heuristic, and settling on
> that one for reasons that I can't recall now. They may even
> be no longer applicable.

Both are incorrect. When CONFIG_PREEMPT=n we have no support for
determining whether schedule() may be called. The calling code has to sort
out its stuff on its own.

<greps for preempt_count>

The LEDs code seems to be the sole offender. print_vma_addr() might be
wrong too, but Ingo did it, and perhaps he knows that all code paths which
call print_vma_addr() from deadlockable contexts have already called
inc_preempt_count(). But is that true for all architectures?

<greps for in_atomic>

omigawd, what have we done, and how can we fix it? :(
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