Hi!
> > > Why are interrupts being disabled for vesafb scrolling anyway ?
> >
> > Console writes happen under spin_lock_irq(console_lock).
> >
> > The only reason for this which I can see: the kernel
> > can call printk() from interrupt context.
>
> We certainly need to be able to call printk from interrupt context so that
> bit is in itself reasonable, but not the cost.
>
> Suppose vesafb did something like this, dropping the printk lock
>
> if(test_and_set_bit(0, &vesafb_lock))
> {
> if(in_interrupt())
> {
> // remember which bit of the dmesg ring to queue
> queued_writes=1;
> return;
> }
> }
Unfortunately, that means that if machine crashes in interrupt, it may
"loose" printk message. That is considered bad (tm).
Pavel
-- I'm pavel@ucw.cz. "In my country we have almost anarchy and I don't care." Panos Katsaloulis describing me w.r.t. patents at discuss@linmodems.org - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Feb 15 2001 - 21:00:18 EST