From 76398425bb06b07cc3a3b1ce169c67dc9d6874ed Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Jonathan Corbet Date: Sun, 1 Feb 2009 14:26:59 -0700 Subject: Move FASYNC bit handling to f_op->fasync() Removing the BKL from FASYNC handling ran into the challenge of keeping the setting of the FASYNC bit in filp->f_flags atomic with regard to calls to the underlying fasync() function. Andi Kleen suggested moving the handling of that bit into fasync(); this patch does exactly that. As a result, we have a couple of internal API changes: fasync() must now manage the FASYNC bit, and it will be called without the BKL held. As it happens, every fasync() implementation in the kernel with one exception calls fasync_helper(). So, if we make fasync_helper() set the FASYNC bit, we can avoid making any changes to the other fasync() functions - as long as those functions, themselves, have proper locking. Most fasync() implementations do nothing but call fasync_helper() - which has its own lock - so they are easily verified as correct. The BKL had already been pushed down into the rest. The networking code has its own version of fasync_helper(), so that code has been augmented with explicit FASYNC bit handling. Cc: Al Viro Cc: David Miller Reviewed-by: Christoph Hellwig Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet --- Documentation/filesystems/Locking | 7 +++++-- 1 file changed, 5 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) (limited to 'Documentation/filesystems') diff --git a/Documentation/filesystems/Locking b/Documentation/filesystems/Locking index ec6a9392a173..4e78ce677843 100644 --- a/Documentation/filesystems/Locking +++ b/Documentation/filesystems/Locking @@ -437,8 +437,11 @@ grab BKL for cases when we close a file that had been opened r/w, but that can and should be done using the internal locking with smaller critical areas). Current worst offender is ext2_get_block()... -->fasync() is a mess. This area needs a big cleanup and that will probably -affect locking. +->fasync() is called without BKL protection, and is responsible for +maintaining the FASYNC bit in filp->f_flags. Most instances call +fasync_helper(), which does that maintenance, so it's not normally +something one needs to worry about. Return values > 0 will be mapped to +zero in the VFS layer. ->readdir() and ->ioctl() on directories must be changed. Ideally we would move ->readdir() to inode_operations and use a separate method for directory -- cgit v1.2.1