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CRED: Holding a spinlock does not imply the holding of RCU read lock
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Change the credentials documentation to make it clear that the RCU read lock
must be explicitly held when accessing credentials pointers in some other task
than current.  Holding a spinlock does not implicitly hold the RCU read lock.

Signed-off-by: Serge Hallyn <[email protected]>
Reviewed-by: Paul E. McKenney <[email protected]>
Signed-off-by: David Howells <[email protected]>
Signed-off-by: James Morris <[email protected]>
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Serge E. Hallyn authored and James Morris committed Apr 26, 2010
1 parent 98ec437 commit b03df87
Showing 1 changed file with 5 additions and 9 deletions.
14 changes: 5 additions & 9 deletions Documentation/credentials.txt
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -408,9 +408,6 @@ This should be used inside the RCU read lock, as in the following example:
...
}

A function need not get RCU read lock to use __task_cred() if it is holding a
spinlock at the time as this implicitly holds the RCU read lock.

Should it be necessary to hold another task's credentials for a long period of
time, and possibly to sleep whilst doing so, then the caller should get a
reference on them using:
Expand All @@ -426,17 +423,16 @@ credentials, hiding the RCU magic from the caller:
uid_t task_uid(task) Task's real UID
uid_t task_euid(task) Task's effective UID

If the caller is holding a spinlock or the RCU read lock at the time anyway,
then:
If the caller is holding the RCU read lock at the time anyway, then:

__task_cred(task)->uid
__task_cred(task)->euid

should be used instead. Similarly, if multiple aspects of a task's credentials
need to be accessed, RCU read lock or a spinlock should be used, __task_cred()
called, the result stored in a temporary pointer and then the credential
aspects called from that before dropping the lock. This prevents the
potentially expensive RCU magic from being invoked multiple times.
need to be accessed, RCU read lock should be used, __task_cred() called, the
result stored in a temporary pointer and then the credential aspects called
from that before dropping the lock. This prevents the potentially expensive
RCU magic from being invoked multiple times.

Should some other single aspect of another task's credentials need to be
accessed, then this can be used:
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