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Date:      Mon, 12 Nov 2001 15:53:28 -0800 (PST)
From:      Julian Elischer <julian@elischer.org>
To:        John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.org>
Cc:        Matthew Dillon <dillon@apollo.backplane.com>, freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG, Robert Watson <rwatson@FreeBSD.ORG>, Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com>
Subject:   Re: cur{thread/proc}, or not.
Message-ID:  <Pine.BSF.4.21.0111121552290.94926-100000@InterJet.elischer.org>
In-Reply-To: <XFMail.011112150837.jhb@FreeBSD.org>

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we should re-examine teh 'refcount' API

it's a very basic type and gettin gmore-so all the time..
we can affort to have a 'standard' 'safe' way of doing reference counts.


On Mon, 12 Nov 2001, John Baldwin wrote:

> 
> On 12-Nov-01 Matthew Dillon wrote:
> >:The point is that if the credentials are granted, then a
> >:change in credential is not a change of the credential itself,
> >:but is instead a copy-on-write proposition.  In other words,
> >:credentials, once granted, are priviledge stable.
> >:
> >:If this is the case, then they are written when they are
> >:instanced, cloned before they are modified (indeed, it seems
> >:that the clone/modify operation must be made atomic), and
> >:thus are never written once instanced -- only destroyed on
> >:the 1->0 reference transition.
> >:
> >:If so, then no locking is required, since the LCK CMPXCHG can
> >:be utilized to do atomic increment and decrement on the
> >:reference counting, without needing locks.
> >:...
> >:
> >:-- Terry
> > 
> >     Yes, I believe this is how credentials work.  I looked at
> >     the code about 6 months ago.  We should not have to do any
> >     locking of the credential stuff, only simple mutexing
> >     around the ref counter.  That is how it should work
> >     is how I believe it currently works.
> 
> Yep.  They use a mutex for the refcount for now, but I still have patches that
> some people don't like for implementing a simple refcount API just using atomic
> operations.
> 
> -- 
> 
> John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.org> -- http://www.FreeBSD.org/~jhb/
> PGP Key: http://www.baldwin.cx/~john/pgpkey.asc
> "Power Users Use the Power to Serve!"  -  http://www.FreeBSD.org/
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