From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1759267AbYAJI7n (ORCPT ); Thu, 10 Jan 2008 03:59:43 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1752663AbYAJI7e (ORCPT ); Thu, 10 Jan 2008 03:59:34 -0500 Received: from mail.sf-mail.de ([62.27.20.61]:51700 "EHLO mail.sf-mail.de" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751586AbYAJI7d (ORCPT ); Thu, 10 Jan 2008 03:59:33 -0500 X-Greylist: delayed 400 seconds by postgrey-1.27 at vger.kernel.org; Thu, 10 Jan 2008 03:59:33 EST From: Rolf Eike Beer To: Andi Kleen Subject: Re: [JANITOR PROPOSAL] Switch ioctl functions to ->unlocked_ioctl Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2008 09:52:49 +0100 User-Agent: KMail/1.9.6 (enterprise 20070904.708012) Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, kernel-janitors@vger.kernel.org, paolo.ciarrocchi@gmail.com, gorcunov@gmail.com References: <20080108164015.GC31504@one.firstfloor.org> In-Reply-To: <20080108164015.GC31504@one.firstfloor.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/signed; boundary="nextPart13956404.uocKkaVyG2"; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; micalg=pgp-sha1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-Id: <200801100952.55039.eike-kernel@sf-tec.de> Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org --nextPart13956404.uocKkaVyG2 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline Andi Kleen wrote: > Here's a proposal for some useful code transformations the kernel janitors > could do as opposed to running checkpatch.pl. > > Most ioctl handlers still running implicitely under the big kernel > lock (BKL). But long term Linux is trying to get away from that. There is= a > new ->unlocked_ioctl entry point that allows ioctls without BKL, but the > code needs to be explicitely converted to use this. > > The first step of getting rid of the BKL is typically to make it visible > in the source. Once it is visible people will have incentive to eliminate > it. That is how the BKL conversion project for Linux long ago started too. > On 2.0 all system calls were still implicitely BKL and in 2.1 the > lock/unlock_kernel()s were moved into the various syscall functions and > then step by step eliminated. Can you explain the rationale behind that running on the BKL? What type of= =20 things needs to be protected so that this huge hammer is needed? What would= =20 be an earlier point to release the BKL? Greetings, Eike --nextPart13956404.uocKkaVyG2 Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name=signature.asc Content-Description: This is a digitally signed message part. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.4-svn0 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQBHhdzmXKSJPmm5/E4RAqvlAJ4kM4eYK8Qzk4fKVWfsunJulEvjTgCgpafm GCNInwxY+HQB19+3/bYGVro= =EJpp -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --nextPart13956404.uocKkaVyG2--