JIRA: https://issues.redhat.com/browse/RHEL-35759
commit a51749ab34d9e5dec548fe38ede7e01e8bb26454
Author: Jann Horn <jannh@google.com>
Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2023 21:48:17 +0100
locking/mutex: Document that mutex_unlock() is non-atomic
I have seen several cases of attempts to use mutex_unlock() to release an
object such that the object can then be freed by another task.
This is not safe because mutex_unlock(), in the
MUTEX_FLAG_WAITERS && !MUTEX_FLAG_HANDOFF case, accesses the mutex
structure after having marked it as unlocked; so mutex_unlock() requires
its caller to ensure that the mutex stays alive until mutex_unlock()
returns.
If MUTEX_FLAG_WAITERS is set and there are real waiters, those waiters
have to keep the mutex alive, but we could have a spurious
MUTEX_FLAG_WAITERS left if an interruptible/killable waiter bailed
between the points where __mutex_unlock_slowpath() did the cmpxchg
reading the flags and where it acquired the wait_lock.
( With spinlocks, that kind of code pattern is allowed and, from what I
remember, used in several places in the kernel. )
Document this, such a semantic difference between mutexes and spinlocks
is fairly unintuitive.
[ mingo: Made the changelog a bit more assertive, refined the comments. ]
Signed-off-by: Jann Horn <jannh@google.com>
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20231130204817.2031407-1-jannh@google.com
Signed-off-by: Waiman Long <longman@redhat.com>
9ae7ca4ed6