linux/Documentation/atomic_bitops.txt
Mikulas Patocka 8238b45798 wait_on_bit: add an acquire memory barrier
There are several places in the kernel where wait_on_bit is not followed
by a memory barrier (for example, in drivers/md/dm-bufio.c:new_read).

On architectures with weak memory ordering, it may happen that memory
accesses that follow wait_on_bit are reordered before wait_on_bit and
they may return invalid data.

Fix this class of bugs by introducing a new function "test_bit_acquire"
that works like test_bit, but has acquire memory ordering semantics.

Signed-off-by: Mikulas Patocka <mpatocka@redhat.com>
Acked-by: Will Deacon <will@kernel.org>
Cc: stable@vger.kernel.org
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2022-08-26 09:30:25 -07:00

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=============
Atomic bitops
=============
While our bitmap_{}() functions are non-atomic, we have a number of operations
operating on single bits in a bitmap that are atomic.
API
---
The single bit operations are:
Non-RMW ops:
test_bit()
RMW atomic operations without return value:
{set,clear,change}_bit()
clear_bit_unlock()
RMW atomic operations with return value:
test_and_{set,clear,change}_bit()
test_and_set_bit_lock()
Barriers:
smp_mb__{before,after}_atomic()
All RMW atomic operations have a '__' prefixed variant which is non-atomic.
SEMANTICS
---------
Non-atomic ops:
In particular __clear_bit_unlock() suffers the same issue as atomic_set(),
which is why the generic version maps to clear_bit_unlock(), see atomic_t.txt.
RMW ops:
The test_and_{}_bit() operations return the original value of the bit.
ORDERING
--------
Like with atomic_t, the rule of thumb is:
- non-RMW operations are unordered;
- RMW operations that have no return value are unordered;
- RMW operations that have a return value are fully ordered.
- RMW operations that are conditional are fully ordered.
Except for a successful test_and_set_bit_lock() which has ACQUIRE semantics,
clear_bit_unlock() which has RELEASE semantics and test_bit_acquire which has
ACQUIRE semantics.
Since a platform only has a single means of achieving atomic operations
the same barriers as for atomic_t are used, see atomic_t.txt.