Re: [PATCH] Replace completions with semaphores

From: Roland Dreier
Date: Sat Apr 12 2008 - 15:53:41 EST


> Arnd contacted me off-list and made the very sensible suggestion of:
>
> struct completion {
> struct semaphore sem;
> }
>
> That lets us eliminate the duplicate code since all the completion
> functions become very thin wrappers around semaphore operations.

Just make sure you don't forget the history of completions... As
Linus said long ago (http://lwn.net/2001/0802/a/lt-completions.php3):

In case anybody cares, the race was that Linux semaphores only protect the
accesses _inside_ the semaphore, while the accesses by the semaphores
themselves can "race" in the internal implementation. That helps make an
efficient implementation, but it means that the race was:

cpu #1 cpu #2

DECLARE_MUTEX_LOCKED(sem);
..
down(&sem); up(&sem);
return;
wake_up(&sem.wait) /*BOOM*/
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