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authorTrond Myklebust <Trond.Myklebust@netapp.com>2006-06-20 20:46:21 -0400
committerTrond Myklebust <Trond.Myklebust@netapp.com>2006-06-20 20:46:21 -0400
commit70ac4385a13f78bc478f26d317511893741b05bd (patch)
treedafc7f3018295fc4ee00339889e4f35d5b9d7743 /fs/jffs2/README.Locking
parentd59bf96cdde5b874a57bfd1425faa45da915d0b7 (diff)
parent077e98945db7e54a9865b5f29a1f02f531eca414 (diff)
Merge branch 'master' of /home/trondmy/kernel/linux-2.6/
Conflicts: include/linux/nfs_fs.h Fixed up conflict with kernel header updates.
Diffstat (limited to 'fs/jffs2/README.Locking')
-rw-r--r--fs/jffs2/README.Locking21
1 files changed, 21 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/fs/jffs2/README.Locking b/fs/jffs2/README.Locking
index b7943439b6e..c8f0bd64e53 100644
--- a/fs/jffs2/README.Locking
+++ b/fs/jffs2/README.Locking
@@ -150,3 +150,24 @@ the buffer.
Ordering constraints:
Lock wbuf_sem last, after the alloc_sem or and f->sem.
+
+
+ c->xattr_sem
+ ------------
+
+This read/write semaphore protects against concurrent access to the
+xattr related objects which include stuff in superblock and ic->xref.
+In read-only path, write-semaphore is too much exclusion. It's enough
+by read-semaphore. But you must hold write-semaphore when updating,
+creating or deleting any xattr related object.
+
+Once xattr_sem released, there would be no assurance for the existence
+of those objects. Thus, a series of processes is often required to retry,
+when updating such a object is necessary under holding read semaphore.
+For example, do_jffs2_getxattr() holds read-semaphore to scan xref and
+xdatum at first. But it retries this process with holding write-semaphore
+after release read-semaphore, if it's necessary to load name/value pair
+from medium.
+
+Ordering constraints:
+ Lock xattr_sem last, after the alloc_sem.