Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Mon, 6 Jan 2003 16:26:11 -0800 (PST)
From:      Nate Lawson <nate@root.org>
To:        Kyunghwan Kim <redjade@ada.snu.ac.kr>
Cc:        current@FreeBSD.ORG, net@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Proper -current if_attach locking?
Message-ID:  <Pine.BSF.4.21.0301061619580.11736-100000@root.org>
In-Reply-To: <20030106143010.GA11655@ada.snu.ac.kr>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Mon, 6 Jan 2003, Kyunghwan Kim wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 06, 2003 at 10:58:25AM +0100, Harti Brandt wrote:
> > On Fri, 3 Jan 2003, Nate Lawson wrote:
> > NL>I was looking into some "could sleep messages" and found some bogus
> > NL>locking in the attach routine of many drivers.  Several init a mtx in
> > NL>their softc and then lock/unlock it in their attach routine.  This, of
> > NL>course, does nothing to provide exclusive access to a device.  I assume
> > NL>there is going to be a global IF_LOCK or something to be used in attach
> > NL>routines.  Can someone fill me in on the intended design?
> > 
> > Probably not. I asked the same question a couple of month ago and got 0
> > answers. I think, there is no way, the driver itself can assure exclusive
> > access to the device it is attaching. It *must* assume, that there is some
> > kind of locking around the call to the attach routine. Getting the lock in
> > the softc inside the attach routine may be neccessary, because the routine
> > may call other functions that assume they have the lock.
> 
> Only using lock in softc can't assure its exclusive access
> because there are some cases of changing some values in ifnet struct
> outside of device driver routines.
> 
> Most of the NIC drivers don't have its own locks for now, and using
> both IFNET_*LOCK() and its own softc lock can't make everything in sync.

My point.
 
> There should be two use of locks IMO: one or more per-device locks
> in driver softc for manipulating per-device private data protection,
> and ifnet lock for each ifnet struct protection (such as ifnet.if_mtx).

Looking further into sys/net/if.c, it appears that the list of interfaces
is protected by IFNET_WLOCK in if_attach().

I think it's safe to work under the following assumptions:
1. newbus will not call an attach routine twice for the same hw
2. ifnet routines take care of themselves
3. per-device locking is only necessary to provide exclusive access within
a given driver instance.

-Nate


To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message




Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?Pine.BSF.4.21.0301061619580.11736-100000>