Re: [ANNOUNCE] mdb: Merkey's Linux Kernel Debugger 2.6.27-rc4 released

From: Stefan Richter
Date: Thu Aug 21 2008 - 10:10:40 EST


Nick Piggin wrote:
> On Thursday 21 August 2008 22:26, jmerkey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
>> It's simple to reproduce. Take away the volatile declaration for the
>> rlock_t structure in mdb-ia32.c (rlock_t debug_lock) in all code
>> references and watch the thing lock up in SMP with multiple processors in
>> the debugger each stuck with their own local copy of debug_lock.
>
> You should disable preempt before getting the processor id. Can't see any
> other possible bugs, but you should be able to see from the disassembly
> pretty easily.

debug_lock() is AFAICS only called from contexts which have preemption
disabled. Last time around I recommended to Jeff to document this
requirement on the calling context.

But even though preemption is disabled, debug_lock() is still incorrect
as I mentioned in my other post a minute ago. It corrupts its .flags
and .count members. (Or maybe it coincidentally doesn't as long as
volatile is around.)
--
Stefan Richter
-=====-==--- =--- =-=-=
http://arcgraph.de/sr/
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/