There are two main types of kernel locks. The fundamental type is the spinlock (include/asm/spinlock.h), which is a very simple single-holder lock: if you can't get the spinlock, you keep trying (spinning) until you can. Spinlocks are very small and fast, and can be used anywhere.
The second type is a semaphore (include/asm/semaphore.h): it can have more than one holder at any time (the number decided at initialization time), although it is most commonly used as a single-holder lock (a mutex). If you can't get a semaphore, your task will put itself on the queue, and be woken up when the semaphore is released. This means the CPU will do something else while you are waiting, but there are many cases when you simply can't sleep (see the section called Things Which Sleep in Chapter 4), and so have to use a spinlock instead.
Neither type of lock is recursive: see the section called Deadlock: Simple and Advanced in Chapter 4.
For kernels compiled without CONFIG_SMP, spinlocks do not exist at all. This is an excellent design decision: when no-one else can run at the same time, there is no reason to have a lock at all.
You should always test your locking code with CONFIG_SMP enabled, even if you don't have an SMP test box, because it will still catch some (simple) kinds of deadlock.
Semaphores still exist, because they are required for synchronization between user contexts, as we will see below.