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Message-ID: <20190110202028.GJ2861@worktop.programming.kicks-ass.net>
Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2019 21:20:28 +0100
From: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org>
To: Florian Westphal <fw@...len.de>
Cc: Anatol Pomozov <anatol.pomozov@...il.com>,
Dmitry Vyukov <dvyukov@...gle.com>, paulmck@...ux.ibm.com,
LKML <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: seqcount usage in xt_replace_table()
On Thu, Jan 10, 2019 at 03:48:12PM +0100, Florian Westphal wrote:
> Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org> wrote:
> > /*
> > * Ensure contents of newinfo are visible before assigning to
> > * private.
> > */
> > smp_wmb();
> > table->private = newinfo;
> >
> > we have:
> >
> > smp_store_release(&table->private, newinfo);
> >
> > But what store does that second smp_wmb() order against? The comment:
> >
> > /* make sure all cpus see new ->private value */
> > smp_wmb();
> >
> > makes no sense what so ever, no smp_*() barrier can provide such
> > guarantees.
>
> IIRC I added this at the request of a reviewer of an earlier iteration
> of that patch.
>
> IIRC the concern was that compiler/hw could re-order
>
> smb_wmb();
> table->private = newinfo;
> /* wait until all cpus are done with old table */
>
> into:
>
> smb_wmb();
> /* wait until all cpus are done with old table */
> ...
> table->private = newinfo;
>
> and that (obviously) makes the wait-loop useless.
The thing is, the 'wait for all cpus' thing is pure loads, not stores,
so smp_wmb() is a complete NOP there.
If you want to ensure those loads happen after that store (which does
indeed seem like a sensible thing), you're going to have to use
smp_mb().
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