xref: /freebsd/share/man/man9/locking.9 (revision 4ff78a9ca8224298f95c5f3f99447de03b354ff5)

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.Dd March 14, 2007
.Dt LOCKING 9
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm locking ,
.Nd kernel synchronization primitives
.Sh SYNOPSIS
All sorts of stuff to go here.
.Pp
.Sh DESCRIPTION
The
.Em FreeBSD
kernel is written to run across multiple CPUs and as such requires
several different synchronization primitives to allow the developers
to safely access and manipulate the many data types required.
.Pp
These include:
.Bl -enum
.It
Spin Mutexes
.It
Sleep Mutexes
.It
pool Mutexes
.It
Shared-Exclusive locks
.It
Reader-Writer locks
.It
Turnstiles
.It
Semaphores
.It
Condition variables
.It
Sleep/wakeup
.It
Giant
.It
Lockmanager locks
.El
.Pp
The primitives interact and have a number of rules regarding how
they can and can not be combined. There are too many for the average
human mind and they keep changing.
(if you disagree, please write replacement text)  :-)
.Pp
Some of these primitives may be used at the low (interrupt) level and
some may not.
.Pp
There are strict ordering requirements and for some of the types this
is checked using the
.Xr witness 4
code.
.Pp
.Ss SPIN Mutexes
Mutexes are the basic primitive.
You either hold it or you don't.
If you don't own it then you just spin, waiting for the holder (on
another CPU) to release it.
Hopefully they are doing something fast.
You can not do anything that deschedules the thread while you
are holding a SPIN mutex.
.Ss Sleep Mutexes
Basically sleep (regular) mutexes will deschedule the thread if the
mutex can not be acquired.
As in spin mutexes, you either get it or you don't.
You may call the
.Xr sleep 9
call
.Fn msleep
or the new
.Fn mtx_sleep
variant. These will atomically drop the mutex and reacquire it
as part of waking up.
.Ss Pool Mutexes
A variant of SLEEP mutexes where the allocation of the mutex is handled
more by the system.
.Ss Sx_locks
Shared/exclusive locks are used to protect data that are read far more often
than they are written.
Mutexes are inherently more efficient than shared/exclusive locks, so
shared/exclusive locks should be used prudently.
A thread may hold a shared or exclusive lock on an
.Em sx_lock
lock while sleeping.
As a result, an
.Em sx_lock
lock may not be acquired while holding a mutex.
Otherwise, if one thread slept while holding an
.Em sx_lock
lock while another thread blocked on the same
.Em sx_lock
lock after acquiring a mutex, then the second thread would effectively
end up sleeping while holding a mutex, which is not allowed.
.Ss Rw_locks
Reader/writer locks allow shared access to protected data by multiple threads,
or exclusive access by a single thread.
The threads with shared access are known as
.Em readers
since they only read the protected data.
A thread with exclusive access is known as a
.Em writer
since it can modify protected data.
.Pp
Although reader/writer locks look very similar to
.Xr sx 9
locks, their usage pattern is different.
Reader/writer locks can be treated as mutexes (see
.Xr mutex 9 )
with shared/exclusive semantics.
Unlike
.Xr sx 9 ,
an
.Em rw_lock
can be locked while holding a non-spin mutex, and an
.Em rw_lock
cannot be held while sleeping.
The
.Em rw_lock
locks have priority propagation like mutexes, but priority
can be propagated only to an exclusive holder.
This limitation comes from the fact that shared owners
are anonymous.
Another important property is that shared holders of
.Em rw_lock
can recurse,
but exclusive locks are not allowed to recurse.
.Ss Turnstiles
Turnstiles are used to hold a queue of threads blocked on
non-sleepable locks.
Sleepable locks use condition variables to implement their queues.
Turnstiles differ from a sleep queue in that turnstile queue's
are assigned to a lock held by an owning thread.
Thus, when one thread is enqueued onto a turnstile, it can lend its
priority to the owning thread.
.Ss Semaphores
.Ss Condition variables
Condition variables are used in conjunction with mutexes to wait for
conditions to occur.
A thread must hold the mutex before calling the
.Fn cv_wait* ,
functions.
When a thread waits on a condition, the mutex
is atomically released before the thread is blocked, then reacquired
before the function call returns.
.Ss Giant
Giant is a special instance of a sleep lock.
it has several special characteristics.
.Ss Sleep/wakeup
The functions
.Fn tsleep ,
.Fn msleep ,
.Fn msleep_spin ,
.Fn pause ,
.Fn wakeup ,
and
.Fn wakeup_one
handle event-based thread blocking.
If a thread must wait for an external event, it is put to sleep by
.Fn tsleep ,
.Fn msleep ,
.Fn msleep_spin ,
or
.Fn pause .
Threads may also wait using one of the locking primitive sleep routines
.Xr mtx_sleep 9 ,
.Xr rw_sleep 9 ,
or
.Xr sx_sleep 9 .
.Pp
The parameter
.Fa chan
is an arbitrary address that uniquely identifies the event on which
the thread is being put to sleep.
All threads sleeping on a single
.Fa chan
are woken up later by
.Fn wakeup ,
often called from inside an interrupt routine, to indicate that the
resource the thread was blocking on is available now.
.Pp
Several of the sleep functions including
.Fn msleep ,
.Fn msleep_spin ,
and the locking primitive sleep routines specify an additional lock
parameter.
The lock will be released before sleeping and reacquired
before the sleep routine returns.
If
.Fa priority
includes the
.Dv PDROP
flag, then the lock will not be reacquired before returning.
The lock is used to ensure that a condition can be checked atomically,
and that the current thread can be suspended without missing a
change to the condition, or an associated wakeup.
In addition, all of the sleep routines will fully drop the
.Va Giant
mutex
(even if recursed)
while the thread is suspended and will reacquire the
.Va Giant
mutex before the function returns.
.Pp
.Ss lockmanager locks
Largly deprecated. See the
.Xr lock 9
page for more information.
I don't know what the downsides are but I'm sure someone will fill in this part.
.Sh Usage tables.
.Ss Interaction table.
The following table shows what you can and can not do if you hold
one of the synchronisation primitives discussed here:
(someone who knows what they are talking about should write this table)
.Bl -column ".Ic xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" ".Xr XXXXXXXXX" ".Xr XXXXXXX" ".Xr XXXXXXX" ".Xr XXXXXXX" ".Xr XXXXX" -offset indent
.It Xo
.Em "You have:  You want:" Ta Spin_mtx Ta Slp_mtx Ta sx_lock Ta rw_lock Ta sleep
.Xc
.It Ic SPIN mutex  Ta \&ok Ta \&no Ta \&no Ta \&no Ta \&no-3
.It Ic Sleep mutex Ta \&ok Ta \&ok-1 Ta \&no Ta \&ok Ta \&no-3
.It Ic sx_lock     Ta \&ok Ta \&no Ta \&ok-2 Ta \&no Ta \&ok-4
.It Ic rw_lock     Ta \&ok Ta \&ok Ta \&no Ta \&ok-2 Ta \&no-3
.El
.Pp
.Em *1
Recursion is defined per lock. Lock order is important.
.Pp
.Em *2
readers can recurse though writers can not. Lock order is important.
.Pp
.Em *3
There are calls atomically release this primitive when going to sleep
and reacquire it on wakeup (e.g.
.Fn mtx_sleep ,
.Fn rw_sleep
and
.Fn msleep_spin ).
.Pp
.Em *4
Though one can sleep holding an sx lock, one can also use
.Fn sx_sleep
which atomically release this primitive when going to sleep and
reacquire it on wakeup.
.Ss Context mode table.
The next table shows what can be used in different contexts.
At this time this is a rather easy to remember table.
.Bl -column ".Ic Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" ".Xr XXXXXXXXX" ".Xr XXXXXXX" ".Xr XXXXXXX" ".Xr XXXXXXX" ".Xr XXXXX" -offset indent
.It Xo
.Em "Context:" Ta Spin_mtx Ta Slp_mtx Ta sx_lock Ta rw_lock Ta sleep
.Xc
.It interrupt:  Ta \&ok Ta \&no Ta \&no Ta \&no Ta \&no
.It idle:  Ta \&ok Ta \&no Ta \&no Ta \&no Ta \&no
.El
.Xc
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr condvar 9 ,
.Xr lock 9
.Xr mtx_pool 9 ,
.Xr rwlock 9 ,
.Xr sema 9 ,
.Xr sleep 9 ,
.Xr sx 9
.Xr LOCK_PROFILING 9 ,
.Xr WITNESS 9 ,
.Sh HISTORY
These
functions appeared in
.Bsx 4.1
through
.Fx 7.0