Timer internals are protected with irq-safe locks but timer execution
isn't, so a timer being dequeued for execution and its execution
aren't atomic against IRQs.  This makes it impossible to wait for its
completion from IRQ handlers and difficult to shoot down a timer from
IRQ handlers.

This issue caused some issues for delayed_work interface.  Because
there's no way to reliably shoot down delayed_work->timer from IRQ
handlers, __cancel_delayed_work() can't share the logic to steal the
target delayed_work with cancel_delayed_work_sync(), and can only
steal delayed_works which are on queued on timer.  Similarly, the
pending mod_delayed_work() can't be used from IRQ handlers.

This patch adds a new timer flag TIMER_IRQSAFE, which makes the timer
to be executed without enabling IRQ after dequeueing such that its
dequeueing and execution are atomic against IRQ handlers.

This makes it safe to wait for the timer's completion from IRQ
handlers, for example, using del_timer_sync().  It can never be
executing on the local CPU and if executing on other CPUs it won't be
interrupted until done.

This will enable simplifying delayed_work cancel/mod interface.

Signed-off-by: Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org>
Cc: torvalds@linux-foundation.org
Cc: peterz@infradead.org
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/1344449428-24962-5-git-send-email-tj@kernel.org


Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>