In send_cpu_listeners(), which is called on the exit path, a down_write()
was protecting operations like skb_clone() and genlmsg_unicast() that do
GFP_KERNEL allocations. If the oom-killer decides to kill tasks to satisfy
the allocations,the exit of those tasks could block on the same semphore.
The down_write() was only needed to allow removal of invalid listeners from
the listener list. The patch converts the down_write to a down_read and
defers the removal to a separate critical region. This ensures that even
if the oom-killer is called, no other task's exit is blocked as it can
still acquire another down_read.
Thanks to Andrew Morton & Herbert Xu for pointing out the oom related
pitfalls, and to Chandra Seetharaman for suggesting this fix instead of
using something more complex like RCU.
Signed-off-by: Chandra Seetharaman <sekharan@us.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Shailabh Nagar <nagar@watson.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
Shailabh Nagar