[PATCH] ARM: ftrace: Ensure code modifications are synchronised across all cpus

Russell King - ARM Linux linux at arm.linux.org.uk
Mon Dec 10 08:57:48 EST 2012


On Mon, Dec 10, 2012 at 08:02:17AM -0500, Steven Rostedt wrote:
> On Mon, 2012-12-10 at 10:04 +0000, Will Deacon wrote:
> > Yes, and I think if you do use two 16-bit nops, you can even get rid of all
> > the intermediate `sync' operations (I guess you might want one at the end if
> > you want the call to become visible at a particular point).
> 
> Wont work. We are replacing a 32bit call with a nop. That nop must also
> be 32bits, because we could eventually replace the nop(s) with a 32bit
> call.

... which, if it's misaligned to a 32-bit boundary, which can happen with
Thumb-2 code, will require the replacement to be done atomically; you will
need to use stop_machine() to ensure that other CPUs don't try to execute
the instruction mid-way through modification... as I have already
explained in my previous mails.



More information about the linux-arm-kernel mailing list