diff options
| -rw-r--r-- | Documentation/scheduler/completion.txt | 42 |
1 files changed, 34 insertions, 8 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/scheduler/completion.txt b/Documentation/scheduler/completion.txt index 91a11a668354..2dbff579f957 100644 --- a/Documentation/scheduler/completion.txt +++ b/Documentation/scheduler/completion.txt @@ -70,8 +70,18 @@ Good, intuitive naming (as always) helps code readability. Naming a completion Initializing completions: ------------------------- -Initialization of dynamically allocated completion objects, often embedded in -other structures, is done via a call to init_completion(): +Dynamically allocated completion objects should preferably be embedded in data +structures that are assured to be alive for the life-time of the function/driver, +to prevent races with asynchronous complete() calls from occurring. + +Particular care should be taken when using the _timeout() or _killable()/_interruptible() +variants of wait_for_completion(), as it must be assured that memory de-allocation +does not happen until all related activities (complete() or reinit_completion()) +have taken place, even if these wait functions return prematurely due to a timeout +or a signal triggering. + +Initializing of dynamically allocated completion objects is done via a call to +init_completion(): init_completion(&dynamic_object->done); @@ -99,16 +109,32 @@ Note that in this case the completion is boot time (or module load time) initialized to 'not done' and doesn't require an init_completion() call. When a completion is declared as a local variable within a function, -then the initialization should always use: +then the initialization should always use DECLARE_COMPLETION_ONSTACK() +explicitly, not just to make lockdep happy, but also to make it clear +that limited scope had been considered and is intentional: DECLARE_COMPLETION_ONSTACK(setup_done) -A simple DECLARE_COMPLETION() on the stack makes lockdep unhappy. - Note that when using completion objects as local variables you must be -aware of the short life time of the function stack: the function must -not return to a calling context until all activities (such as waiting -threads) have ceased and the completion is ... completely unused. +acutely aware of the short life time of the function stack: the function +must not return to a calling context until all activities (such as waiting +threads) have ceased and the completion object is completely unused. + +To emphasise this again: in particular when using some of the waiting API variants +with more complex outcomes, such as the timeout or signalling (_timeout(), +_killable() and _interruptible()) variants, the wait might complete +prematurely while the object might still be in use by another thread - and a return +from the wait_on_completion*() caller function will deallocate the function +stack and cause subtle data corruption if a complete() is done in some +other thread. Simple testing might not trigger these kinds of races. + +If unsure, use dynamically allocated completion objects, preferably embedded +in some other long lived object that has a boringly long life time which +exceeds the life time of any helper threads using the completion object, +or has a lock or other synchronization mechanism to make sure complete() +is not called on a freed object. + +A naive DECLARE_COMPLETION() on the stack triggers a lockdep warning. Waiting for completions: ------------------------ |