From: Hao Liang <hliang1...@gmail.com> Date: Mon, 20 Oct 2014 16:55:08 +0800
> I can't quite seize David's meaing whether the ->mac->xxx should > inside the lock or outside the lock. In my opinion, the ->mac->xxx > calls did not operate any shared data or struct. The calls just > control the hardware by write data to registers. So ->mac->xxx > calls can be removed from lock. If you make a decision to program the hardware in a certain way, you must make sure that hardware programming operation occurs atomically. This could be because it takes multiple register writes to perform the operation and they are dependent upon eachother, or you are makeing multiple modifications which must occur in a certain sequence. If you allow these ->mac->xxx calls to run in parallel with eachother I guarantee it will cause problems. Stop brushing it off as a non-issue, unless you want your driver to mysteriously not work when the race is triggered. -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majord...@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
