On 10/31/2012 08:22 AM, Tejun Heo wrote:

Because ->pre_destroy() could fail and can't be called under
cgroup_mutex, cgroup destruction did something very ugly.

  1. Grab cgroup_mutex and verify it can be destroyed; fail otherwise.

  2. Release cgroup_mutex and call ->pre_destroy().

  3. Re-grab cgroup_mutex and verify it can still be destroyed; fail
     otherwise.

  4. Continue destroying.

In addition to being ugly, it has been always broken in various ways.
For example, memcg ->pre_destroy() expects the cgroup to be inactive
after it's done but tasks can be attached and detached between #2 and
#3 and the conditions that memcg verified in ->pre_destroy() might no
longer hold by the time control reaches #3.

Now that ->pre_destroy() is no longer allowed to fail.  We can switch
to the following.

  1. Grab cgroup_mutex and fail if it can't be destroyed; fail
     otherwise.

fail, or fail otherwise? Seems quite negative =)