Re: [RFC][PATCH v2 19/31] timers: net: Use del_timer_shutdown() before freeing timer

[Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>]

On Thu, Oct 27, 2022 at 1:34 PM Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org> wrote:
>
> What about del_timer_try_shutdown(), that if it removes the timer, it sets
> the function to NULL (making it equivalent to a successful shutdown),
> otherwise it does nothing. Allowing the the timer to be rearmed.

Sounds sane to me and should work, but as mentioned, I think the
networking people need to say "yeah" too.

And maybe that function can also disallow any future re-arming even
for the case where the timer couldn't be actively removed.

So any *currently* active timer wouldn't be waited for (either because
locking may make that a deadlock situation, or simply due to
performance issues), but at least it would guarantee that no new timer
activations can happen.

Because I do like the whole notion of "timer has been shutdown and
cannot be used as a timer any more without re-initializing it" being a
real state - even for a timer that may be "currently in flight".

So this all sounds very worthwhile to me, but I'm not surprised that
we have code that then knows about all the subtleties of "del_timer()
might still have a running timer" and actually take advantage of it
(where "advantage" is likely more of a "deal with the complexities"
rather than anything really positive ;)

And those existing subtle users might want particular semantics to at
least make said complexities easier.

               Linus