Re: [PATCH printk 06/18] printk: Protect [un]register_console() with a mutex

[Sergey Senozhatsky]

On (22/10/03 21:41), John Ogness wrote:
> A semaphore has been needed because we are performing global locking for
> ambiguous reasons in all possible contexts. We should be using
> fine-grained lock and synchronization mechanisms that are appropriate
> for their used contexts to precisely lock/synchronize exactly what needs
> to be locked/synchronized.
> 
> Your first question is literally, "what is wrong with a BKL".
> 
> And the answer to that is: A BKL is preventing us from optimizing the
> kernel by decoupling unrelated activities.
> 
> > The above proposal suggests that it might be something like:
> >
> > register_console()
> > {
> > 	console_list_lock();
> >
> > 	if (!need_console())
> > 		goto out;
> >
> > 	if (!try_enable_console())
> > 		goto out;
> >
> > 	if (!(con->flags & CON_NOBLK))
> > 		console_lock()
> 
> Why are you taking the console_lock here? The console_list_lock needs to
> replace this responsibility. I realize the RFC and this v1 series does
> not do this. For v2, it will be clear.

So tty/VT code also needs to take list_lock? list_lock does not look
precisely relevant to vt, which has it's own "list" of "struct vc" to
maintain.