Re: runaway SCSI eh thread

grant@torque.net
Sat, 30 Jan 1999 09:20:34 -0500 (EST)

> > Are there any known issues with semaphores that explain this ? I suppose
> > it is possible that I am stomping on the eh_wait semaphore somehow, but
> > that seems an unlikely explanation.
>
> Yes -- they are recursive now. That means that once down() returns zero
> for you, it will return with zero immediately on subsequent calls because
> you 'own' the semaphore.
>
> I've said before, and I'll say it again, that this doesn't make any sense
> for semaphores, even though it might be appropriate for a mutex.

This strikes me as absurd.

It's even more absurd that such a fundamental change in the semantics
of a core kernel primitive was made during the deep code freeze.

I can probably solve the problem in my own driver by reverting to
the "obsolete" scsi error handling, but I'm sure there are going to be
more than a few people with aha1542 adapters that will be pulling their
hair out when their system freezes after the SCSI target probe.

Is this a brown-paper-bag bug ?

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Grant R. Guenther grant@torque.net
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