Re: 2.3.39 compile errors on Alpha

[David S. Miller]

   From: Alan Cox <[e-mail]>
   Date: 30 Sep 2002 14:15:50 +0100
   
   Because I was looking over the gettimeoffset code and forgot that
   gettimeofday itself takes the xtime_lock 8)

It used to be possible to implement this lockless using a $(sizeof
xtime)-bit load.  But once you start adding complications such as
wall_jiffies, it isn't feasible anymore.

The next idea is to have a tick cookie that could later be converted
to/from a full timeval.  This trick doesn't work on things like Alpha
where the guarenteed life of the tick is only 6 seconds or something
like that.

Most of the time the timestamp isn't even used.

If someone can propose other ideas I'm ready and listening :-)