linux-kernel - get_online_cpus() from a preemptible() context (bug?)

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Date:   Fri, 03 Nov 2017 14:45:45 +0000
From:   James Morse <james.morse@....com>
To:     Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org>,
        Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>
CC:     "linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org" <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: get_online_cpus() from a  preemptible() context (bug?)

Hi Thomas, Peter,

I'm trying to work out what stops a thread being pre-empted and migrated between
calling get_online_cpus() and put_online_cpus().

According to __percpu_down_read(), its the pre-empt count:
>  * Due to having preemption disabled the decrement happens on
>  * the same CPU as the increment, avoiding the
>  * increment-on-one-CPU-and-decrement-on-another problem.


So this:
> void cpus_read_lock(void)
> {
>        percpu_down_read(&cpu_hotplug_lock);
> +
> +       /* Can we migrated before we release this per-cpu lock? */
> +       WARN_ON(preemptible());
>  }

should never fire?

It does, some of the offenders:
> kmem_cache_create
> apply_workqueue_attrs
> stop_machine
> static_key_enable
> lru_add_drain_all
> __cpuhp_setup_state
> kmem_cache_shrink
> vmstat_shepherd
> __cpuhp_state_add_instance


Trying to leave preempt disabled between the down/up leads to
scheduling-while-atomic instead.

Can you point out what I've missed here?


Thanks,

James