Kernel Concurrency & Synchronization

Identify potential race conditions in kernel code and explain why user-space primitives are insufficient.

Compare spinlocks, mutexes, and semaphores in terms of behavior, sleeping context, and appropriate usage.

Implement a kernel module that correctly synchronizes access to shared data using appropriate locking primitives.

Explain Read-Copy-Update (RCU) and identify scenarios where it is preferred over traditional locking.

Use atomic operations and per-CPU variables to avoid locking overhead in performance-critical paths.

Diagnose a deadlock scenario in kernel code using the lockdep tool to analyze lock dependencies.

Resolve a diagnosed deadlock by applying a consistent lock ordering scheme to the kernel code.