From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1759724AbYDCBGe (ORCPT ); Wed, 2 Apr 2008 21:06:34 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1757580AbYDCBG1 (ORCPT ); Wed, 2 Apr 2008 21:06:27 -0400 Received: from relay2.sgi.com ([192.48.171.30]:59020 "EHLO relay.sgi.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-FAIL) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1753535AbYDCBG0 (ORCPT ); Wed, 2 Apr 2008 21:06:26 -0400 Date: Wed, 2 Apr 2008 18:03:50 -0700 (PDT) From: Christoph Lameter X-X-Sender: clameter@schroedinger.engr.sgi.com To: Andrea Arcangeli cc: akpm@linux-foundation.org, Jack Steiner , Nick Piggin , Robin Holt , Avi Kivity , Izik Eidus , kvm-devel@lists.sourceforge.net, Peter Zijlstra , general@lists.openfabrics.org, Steve Wise , Roland Dreier , Kanoj Sarcar , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-mm@kvack.org Subject: Re: [PATCH 1 of 8] Core of mmu notifiers In-Reply-To: <20080403004246.GA16633@duo.random> Message-ID: References: <20080403004246.GA16633@duo.random> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Thinking about this adventurous locking some more: I think you are misunderstanding what a seqlock is. It is *not* a spinlock. The critical read section with the reading of a version before and after allows you access to a certain version of memory how it is or was some time ago (caching effect). It does not mean that the current state of memory is fixed and neither does it allow syncing when an item is added to the list. So it could be that you are traversing a list that is missing one item because it is not visible to this processor yet. You may just see a state from the past. I would think that you will need a real lock in order to get the desired effect.