Re: sbp2.c on SMP

[H . J . Lu]

On Sun, Nov 11, 2001 at 05:37:21PM -0800, Andrew Morton wrote:
> 
> With the appended patch I can confirm that the driver happily runs
> `dbench 40' for half an hour on dual x86.   Even when you kick the

Thanks a lot.

> disk onto the floor (sorry, HJ).

That is a good stress test.

> 
> The games which scsi_old_done() plays with spinlocks and interrupt
> enabling are really foul.  If someone calls it with interrupts disabled
> (sbp2 does this) then scsi_old_done() will enable interrupts for you.
> If, for example, you call scsi_old_done() under spin_lock_irqsave(), 
> the reenabling of interrupts will expose you to deadlocks.  Perhaps
> scsi_old_done() should just use spin_unlock()/spin_lock()?
> 
> I tried enabling SBP2_USE_REAL_SPINLOCKS in sbp2.c and that appears to
> work just fine, although I haven't left that change in place here.
> 
> You don't actually _need_ SMP hardware to test SMP code, BTW.  You
> can just build an SMP kernel and run that on a uniprocessor box.
> This will still catch a wide range of bugs - it certainly detects
> the lockup which was occurring because of the scsi_old_done() thing.
> 
> Incidentally, it would be nice to be able to get this driver working
> properly when linked into the kernel - it makes debugging much easier :)
> 

I guess I can try that. The only main issue will be the order of
initialization.

H.J.