Re: [PATCH 1/7] General notification queue with user mmap()'able ring buffer

From: David Howells
Date: Wed May 29 2019 - 17:06:35 EST


Jann Horn <jannh@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Does this mean that refcount_read() isn't sufficient for what you want
> to do with tracing (because for some reason you actually need to know
> the values atomically at the time of increment/decrement)?

Correct. There's a gap and if an interrupt or something occurs, it's
sufficiently big for the refcount trace to go weird.

I've seen it in afs/rxrpc where the incoming network packets that are part of
the rxrpc call flow disrupt the refcounts noted in trace lines.

David