documentation: State that rcu_dereference() reloads pointer
Make a note stating that repeated calls of rcu_dereference() may not
return the same pointer if update happens while in critical section.
Reported-by: Jeff Haran <jeff.haran@citrix.com>
Signed-off-by: Milos Vyletel <milos@redhat.com>
Reviewed-by: Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org>
Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
diff --git a/Documentation/RCU/whatisRCU.txt b/Documentation/RCU/whatisRCU.txt
index 88dfce1..16622c9 100644
--- a/Documentation/RCU/whatisRCU.txt
+++ b/Documentation/RCU/whatisRCU.txt
@@ -256,7 +256,9 @@
If you are going to be fetching multiple fields from the
RCU-protected structure, using the local variable is of
course preferred. Repeated rcu_dereference() calls look
- ugly and incur unnecessary overhead on Alpha CPUs.
+ ugly, do not guarantee that the same pointer will be returned
+ if an update happened while in the critical section, and incur
+ unnecessary overhead on Alpha CPUs.
Note that the value returned by rcu_dereference() is valid
only within the enclosing RCU read-side critical section.