Documentation/RCU/lockdep.txt

RCU and lockdep checking

All flavors of RCU have lockdep checking available, so that lockdep is
aware of when each task enters and leaves any flavor of RCU read-side
critical section.  Each flavor of RCU is tracked separately (but note
that this is not the case in 2.6.32 and earlier).  This allows lockdep's
tracking to include RCU state, which can sometimes help when debugging
deadlocks and the like.

In addition, RCU provides the following primitives that check lockdep's
state:

	rcu_read_lock_held() for normal RCU.
	rcu_read_lock_bh_held() for RCU-bh.
	rcu_read_lock_sched_held() for RCU-sched.
	srcu_read_lock_held() for SRCU.

These functions are conservative, and will therefore return 1 if they
aren't certain (for example, if CONFIG_DEBUG_LOCK_ALLOC is not set).
This prevents things like WARN_ON(!rcu_read_lock_held()) from giving false
positives when lockdep is disabled.

In addition, a separate kernel config parameter CONFIG_PROVE_RCU enables
checking of rcu_dereference() primitives:

	rcu_dereference(p):
		Check for RCU read-side critical section.
	rcu_dereference_bh(p):
		Check for RCU-bh read-side critical section.
	rcu_dereference_sched(p):
		Check for RCU-sched read-side critical section.
	srcu_dereference(p, sp):
		Check for SRCU read-side critical section.
	rcu_dereference_check(p, c):
		Use explicit check expression "c".
	rcu_dereference_raw(p)
		Don't check.  (Use sparingly, if at all.)

The rcu_dereference_check() check expression can be any boolean
expression, but would normally include one of the rcu_read_lock_held()
family of functions and a lockdep expression.  However, any boolean
expression can be used.  For a moderately ornate example, consider
the following:

	file = rcu_dereference_check(fdt->fd[fd],
				     rcu_read_lock_held() ||
				     lockdep_is_held(&files->file_lock) ||
				     atomic_read(&files->count) == 1);

This expression picks up the pointer "fdt->fd[fd]" in an RCU-safe manner,
and, if CONFIG_PROVE_RCU is configured, verifies that this expression
is used in:

1.	An RCU read-side critical section, or
2.	with files->file_lock held, or
3.	on an unshared files_struct.

In case (1), the pointer is picked up in an RCU-safe manner for vanilla
RCU read-side critical sections, in case (2) the ->file_lock prevents
any change from taking place, and finally, in case (3) the current task
is the only task accessing the file_struct, again preventing any change
from taking place.

There are currently only "universal" versions of the rcu_assign_pointer()
and RCU list-/tree-traversal primitives, which do not (yet) check for
being in an RCU read-side critical section.  In the future, separate
versions of these primitives might be created.