GitLab

Currently, when a reader acquires a lock, it only sets the
RWSEM_READER_OWNED bit in the owner field. The other bits are simply
not used. When debugging hanging cases involving rwsems and readers,
the owner value does not provide much useful information at all.

This patch modifies the current behavior to always store the task_struct
pointer of the last rwsem-acquiring reader in a reader-owned rwsem. This
may be useful in debugging rwsem hanging cases especially if only one
reader is involved. However, the task in the owner field may not the
real owner or one of the real owners at all when the owner value is
examined, for example, in a crash dump. So it is just an additional
hint about the past history.

If CONFIG_DEBUG_RWSEMS=y is enabled, the owner field will be checked at
unlock time too to make sure the task pointer value is valid. That does
have a slight performance cost and so is only enabled as part of that
debug option.

From the p...