mempool: clarify behavior of mempool_alloc_preallocated()

The documentation of that function promises to never sleep.  However on
PREEMPT_RT a spinlock_t might in fact sleep.

Reword the documentation so users can predict its behavior better.

mempool could also replace spinlock_t with raw_spinlock_t which doesn't
sleep even on PREEMPT_RT but that would take away the improved
preemptibility of sleeping locks.

Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20251014-mempool-doc-v1-1-bc9ebf169700@linutronix.de
Signed-off-by: Thomas Weißschuh <thomas.weissschuh@linutronix.de>
Cc: Christoph Lameter <cl@gentwo.org>
Cc: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com>
Cc: Roman Gushchin <roman.gushchin@linux.dev>
Cc: Sebastian Andrzej Siewior <bigeasy@linutronix.de>
Cc: Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org>
Cc: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>

diff --git a/mm/mempool.c b/mm/mempool.c
index 1c38e873e546fadcc594f041874eb42774e3df16..cceb09b75ebe35f263a5fb95ff6d400221ecbdd5 100644 (file)
--- a/mm/mempool.c
+++ b/mm/mempool.c
@@ -461,8 +461,8 @@ EXPORT_SYMBOL(mempool_alloc_noprof);
  *             mempool_create().
  *
  * This function is similar to mempool_alloc, but it only attempts allocating
- * an element from the preallocated elements. It does not sleep and immediately
- * returns if no preallocated elements are available.
+ * an element from the preallocated elements. It only takes a single spinlock_t
+ * and immediately returns if no preallocated elements are available.
  *
  * Return: pointer to the allocated element or %NULL if no elements are
  * available.