Hello,
lock_kernel() is a reentrant spinlock that is meant to protect
all code that's not SMP safe. In 2.2, this is a good part of the
kernel; in 2.4, it's not very much at all. (It's reentrant
because it can be held across calls to schedule(), a normal
spinlock can't and would deadlock the system if you did that)
Eric
> Hi,
>
> I was wondering why it is necessary for the usb_hub_thread() in
> drivers/usb/hub.c to have the big kernel lock with lock_kernel() ?
>
> What is it with lock_kernel() anyway ?
>
> extern __inline__ void lock_kernel(void)
> {
> #if 1
> if (!++current->lock_depth)
> spin_lock(&kernel_flag);
> #else
> __asm__ __volatile__(
> "incl %1\n\t"
> "jne 9f"
> spin_lock_string
> "\n9:"
> :"=m" (__dummy_lock(&kernel_flag)),
> "=m" (current->lock_depth));
> #endif
> }
>
> Can someone explain what is behind lock_kernel() and
> these changes (#if 1) in 2.4 ?
>
> Is there any documentation for this out there ?
>
--
Eric Lowe
Software Engineer, Systran Corporation
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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