tree 40c70ea83ee63b28aaddd7029e5417afc36c8afd
parent 30d1d92a888d03681b927c76a35181b4eed7071f
author Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> 1559593580 -0700
committer Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> 1559593580 -0700

rcu: locking and unlocking need to always be at least barriers

Herbert Xu pointed out that commit bb73c52bad36 ("rcu: Don't disable
preemption for Tiny and Tree RCU readers") was incorrect in making the
preempt_disable/enable() be conditional on CONFIG_PREEMPT_COUNT.

If CONFIG_PREEMPT_COUNT isn't enabled, the preemption enable/disable is
a no-op, but still is a compiler barrier.

And RCU locking still _needs_ that compiler barrier.

It is simply fundamentally not true that RCU locking would be a complete
no-op: we still need to guarantee (for example) that things that can
trap and cause preemption cannot migrate into the RCU locked region.

The way we do that is by making it a barrier.

See for example commit 386afc91144b ("spinlocks and preemption points
need to be at least compiler barriers") from back in 2013 that had
similar issues with spinlocks that become no-ops on UP: they must still
constrain the compiler from moving other operations into the critical
region.

Now, it is true that a lot of RCU operations already use READ_ONCE() and
WRITE_ONCE() (which in practice likely would never be re-ordered wrt
anything remotely interesting), but it is also true that that is not
globally the case, and that it's not even necessarily always possible
(ie bitfields etc).

Reported-by: Herbert Xu <herbert@gondor.apana.org.au>
Fixes: bb73c52bad36 ("rcu: Don't disable preemption for Tiny and Tree RCU readers")
Cc: stable@kernel.org
Cc: Boqun Feng <boqun.feng@gmail.com>
Cc: Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>