Re: Reference counting of MMC host driver modules

[Enrik Berkhan <Enrik.Berkhan@ge.com>]

Stefan Richter wrote:
> Enrik Berkhan wrote:
> > When removing the mmc_host_driver, everything seems to be fine; the
> > MMC/SD block device has been deactivated by mmc_blk_remove(), that in
> > turn has stopped the queue via mmc_cleanup_queue(). mmc_cleanup_queue()
> > calls blk_cleanup_queue() on the underlying struct request_queue. By
> > this, the reference count of the struct request_queues kboj drops to
> > zero. The MD driver still has the block device open and, actually,
> > things work fine unless the memory of the struct request_queue isn't
> > touched, because it is marked dead. Of course, accessing the MD device
> > returns EIO, but that's fine.
> > 
> > When the mmc_host_driver is reloaded, new struct request_queues will be
> > allocated and with some probability, the old memory will be re-used for
> > them or the old memory locations will be re-used for something else. The
> > key point is that the queues still in use by the MD layer will
> > effectively no longer be marked dead or completely corrupted.
> 
> So in short, the request_queue's reference count goes to zero even
> though something still points to it?

Exactly. AFAICS.

I haven't checked yet if this happens using other block device
infrastructure, too.

Enrik