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The function tracer needs to be more careful than other subsystems when it comes to freeing data. Especially if that data is actually executable code. When a single function is traced, a trampoline can be dynamically allocated which is called to jump to the function trace callback. When the callback is no longer needed, the dynamic allocated trampoline needs to be freed. This is where the issues arise. The dynamically allocated trampoline must not be used again. As function tracing can trace all subsystems, including subsystems that are used to serialize aspects of freeing (namely RCU), it must take extra care when doing the freeing. Before synchronize_rcu_tasks() was around, there was no way for the function tracer to know that nothing was using the dynamically allocated trampoline when CONFIG_PREEMPT was enabled. That's because a task could be indefinitely preempted while sitting on the trampoline. Now with synchronize_rcu_tasks(), it will wait till all tasks have either voluntarily scheduled (not on the trampoline) or goes into userspace (not on the trampoline). Then it is safe to free the trampoline even with CONFIG_PREEMPT set. Acked-by: "Paul E. McKenney" <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com> Signed-off-by: Steven Rostedt (VMware) <rostedt@goodmis.org>
Linux kernel ============ This file was moved to Documentation/admin-guide/README.rst Please notice that there are several guides for kernel developers and users. These guides can be rendered in a number of formats, like HTML and PDF. In order to build the documentation, use ``make htmldocs`` or ``make pdfdocs``. There are various text files in the Documentation/ subdirectory, several of them using the Restructured Text markup notation. See Documentation/00-INDEX for a list of what is contained in each file. Please read the Documentation/process/changes.rst file, as it contains the requirements for building and running the kernel, and information about the problems which may result by upgrading your kernel.