Jiri Kosina: cleaning up kthread freezer hell, part 2

July 15, 2016

Related Material::

  1. 2015 “giving freezer well-defined semantics”Tech Topic
  2. LWN Coverage

Additional Participants: Julia Lawall, Rafael J. Wysocki, Shuah Khan, and Theodore Ts'o.

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Jiri recounted his discussions at the 2015 Linux Kernel Summit on why the kthread freezer is harmful and should be removed (see Related Materials above). To this end, Jiri has trawled through the kernel sources, but found that there are many places where the kthread freezer is improperly used, and, worse yet, that improper usage spreads via the dreaded copy-and-paste infection vector. Jiri would like to summarize his experiences, explain the issue, and push for a resolution, hopefully as a core topic.

Rafael Wysocki, Julia Lawall, and Shuah Khan all voiced their support. Ted Ts'o noted that the core/tech choice could be “and” instead of “or”, suggesting discussion/resolution on the core day and presentation of the results as a tech topic. Ted also suggested the possibility of video or audio recording of the tech-topic presentation, but noted that doing this would require special arrangements and sponsorship.