Locking and Your Code

Making your code SMP-safe is not something that can be added as an afterthought. Proper synchronizationlocking that is free of deadlocks, scalable, and cleanrequires design decisions from start through finish. Whenever you write kernel code, whether it is a new system call or a rewritten driver, protecting data from concurrent access needs to be a primary concern.

Provide sufficient protection for every scenarioSMP, kernel preemption, and so onand rest assured the data will be safe on any given machine and configuration. The next chapter discusses just how to do this.

With the fundamentals and the theories of synchronization, concurrency, and locking behind us, let's now dive into the actual tools that the Linux kernel provides to ensure that your code is race and deadlock free.