linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH] make checkpatch warn about access to current->comm

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Date:	27 Jan 2009 19:15:00 +0100
From:	lirc@...telmus.de (Christoph Bartelmus)
To:	torvalds@...ux-foundation.org
Cc:	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] make checkpatch warn about access to current->comm

On 27 Jan 09 at 07:45, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> On Tue, 27 Jan 2009, Kyle McMartin wrote:
>>
>> Suggest using the get_task_comm accessor versus direct access to
>> current->comm.

> I think "current->comm" is fine, and not racy.
>
> It only gets racy when you ask for the name of _another_ task.
>
> And quite frankly, I don't think anybody but /proc does that anyway. I
> think this whole "get_task_comm()" thing is overrated. Most people are
> better off doing just "current->comm".

This issue only came up because for someone like me it's not obvious at  
all that using "current->comm" is safe and the comment in sched.h  
explicitly points out that task_struct.comm should be accessed with  
[gs]et_task_comm.

Christoph
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