Re: Deadlock on the mm->mmap_sem

[Linus Torvalds]

On Tue, 18 Sep 2001, David Howells wrote:
>
> Okay preliminary as-yet-untested patch to cure coredumping of the need
> to hold the mm semaphore:
>
> 	- kernel/fork.c: function to partially copy an mm_struct and attach it
> 			 to the task_struct in place of the old.

Oh, please no.

If the choice is between a hack to do strange and incomprehensible things
for a special case, and just making the semaphores do the same thing
rw-spinlocks do and make the problem go away naturally, Ill take #2 any
day. The patches already exist, after all.

		Linus