The problem is that klists claim to provide semantics for safe traversal of
lists which are being modified. The failure case is when traversal of a
list causes element removal (a fairly common case). The issue is that
although the list node is refcounted, if it is embedded in an object (which
is universally the case), then the object will be freed regardless of the
klist refcount leading to slab corruption because the klist iterator refers
to the prior element to get the next.
The solution is to make the klist take and release references to the
embedding object meaning that the embedding object won't be released until
the list relinquishes the reference to it.
(akpm: fast-track this because it's needed for the 2.6.13 scsi merge)
Signed-off-by: James Bottomley <James.Bottomley@SteelEye.com>
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@suse.de>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
at the moment, the list_head semantics are
list_add(node, head)
whereas current klist semantics are
klist_add(head, node)
This is bound to cause confusion, and since klist is the newcomer, it
should follow the list_head semantics.
I also added missing include guards to klist.h
Signed-off-by: James Bottomley <James.Bottomley@SteelEye.com>
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@suse.de>
This klist interface provides a couple of structures that wrap around
struct list_head to provide explicit list "head" (struct klist) and
list "node" (struct klist_node) objects. For struct klist, a spinlock
is included that protects access to the actual list itself. struct
klist_node provides a pointer to the klist that owns it and a kref
reference count that indicates the number of current users of that node
in the list.
The entire point is to provide an interface for iterating over a list
that is safe and allows for modification of the list during the
iteration (e.g. insertion and removal), including modification of the
current node on the list.
It works using a 3rd object type - struct klist_iter - that is declared
and initialized before an iteration. klist_next() is used to acquire the
next element in the list. It returns NULL if there are no more items.
This klist interface provides a couple of structures that wrap around
struct list_head to provide explicit list "head" (struct klist) and
list "node" (struct klist_node) objects. For struct klist, a spinlock
is included that protects access to the actual list itself. struct
klist_node provides a pointer to the klist that owns it and a kref
reference count that indicates the number of current users of that node
in the list.
The entire point is to provide an interface for iterating over a list
that is safe and allows for modification of the list during the
iteration (e.g. insertion and removal), including modification of the
current node on the list.
It works using a 3rd object type - struct klist_iter - that is declared
and initialized before an iteration. klist_next() is used to acquire the
next element in the list. It returns NULL if there are no more items.
Internally, that routine takes the klist's lock, decrements the reference
count of the previous klist_node and increments the count of the next
klist_node. It then drops the lock and returns.
There are primitives for adding and removing nodes to/from a klist.
When deleting, klist_del() will simply decrement the reference count.
Only when the count goes to 0 is the node removed from the list.
klist_remove() will try to delete the node from the list and block
until it is actually removed. This is useful for objects (like devices)
that have been removed from the system and must be freed (but must wait
until all accessors have finished).
Internally, that routine takes the klist's lock, decrements the reference
count of the previous klist_node and increments the count of the next
klist_node. It then drops the lock and returns.
There are primitives for adding and removing nodes to/from a klist.
When deleting, klist_del() will simply decrement the reference count.
Only when the count goes to 0 is the node removed from the list.
klist_remove() will try to delete the node from the list and block
until it is actually removed. This is useful for objects (like devices)
that have been removed from the system and must be freed (but must wait
until all accessors have finished).
Signed-off-by: Patrick Mochel <mochel@digitalimplant.org>
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@suse.de>
diff -Nru a/include/linux/klist.h b/include/linux/klist.h
James Bottomley
James Bottomley
mochel@digitalimplant.org