On Mon, 2015-09-21 at 17:10 +0200, Dmitry Vyukov wrote: > On Mon, Sep 21, 2015 at 4:51 PM, Eric Dumazet <eric.duma...@gmail.com> wrote: > > On Mon, 2015-09-21 at 06:31 -0700, Eric Dumazet wrote: > >> On Mon, 2015-09-21 at 10:08 +0200, Dmitry Vyukov wrote: > >> > rhashtable_rehash_one() uses plain writes to update entry->next, > >> > while it is being concurrently accessed by readers. > >> > Unfortunately, the compiler is within its rights to (for example) use > >> > byte-at-a-time writes to update the pointer, which would fatally confuse > >> > concurrent readers. > >> > > >> This is bogus. > >> > >> 1) Linux is certainly not working if some arch or compiler is not doing > >> single word writes. WRITE_ONCE() would not help at all to enforce this. > >> > >> 2) If new node is not yet visible, we don't care if we write > >> entry->next using any kind of operation. > >> > >> So the WRITE_ONCE() is not needed at all. > >> > >> > >> > >> > + WRITE_ONCE(entry->next, head); > >> > >> > >> The rcu_assign_pointer() immediately following is enough in this case. > >> > >> We have hundred of similar cases in the kernel. > >> > >> > > > > The changelog and comment are totally confusing. > > > > Please remove the bogus parts in them, and/or rephrase. > > > > The important part here is that we rehash an item, so we need to make > > sure to maintain consistent ->next field, and need to prevent compiler > > from using ->next as a temporary variable. > > > > ptr->next = 1UL | ((base + offset) << 1); > > > > Is dangerous because compiler could issue : > > > > ptr->next = (base + offset); > > > > ptr->next <<= 1; > > > > ptr->next += 1UL; > > > > Frankly, all this looks like an oversight in this code. > > > > Not sure why the NULLS value is even recomputed. > > I have not looked in detail yet, but the NULLS recomputation uses > new_hash, which obviously wasn't available when the value was > previously computed. Don't know yet whether it is important or not.
Well, head already contains the right value, set in bucket_table_alloc() for (i = 0; i < nbuckets; i++) INIT_RHT_NULLS_HEAD(tbl->buckets[i], ht, i); Think of this nulls value as a special NULL pointer. If hash table is properly allocated/initialized, all the chains are correctly ending with a proper NULL pointer. -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe netdev" in the body of a message to majord...@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html