The realtime preemption endgame [LWN.net]

The realtime preemption endgame

Posted Aug 6, 2009 10:07 UTC (Thu) by mb (subscriber, #50428)
In reply to: The realtime preemption endgame by tialaramex
Parent article: The realtime preemption endgame

> But presumably the LKML would also frown on a patch which says "Drivername: Remove BKL" and offers as justification only the fact that "It works for me".

If you just remove any locking from a driver, it will most likely just work as before. Locking usually is not such a critical thing in a driver that it immediately breaks things.
_But_ it will introduce silent cornercase breakages that you will probably only notice weeks later when some weird coincidence happens.
So you'd better make sure you _do_ understand the locking requirements before removing the BKL from a driver.
Removing the BKL from part of the code requires deep understanding of that code and its interactions with other BKL holders(!). That is the actual problem.

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