linux-kernel - Re: [Xen-devel] [patch 14/33] xen: xen time implementation

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Date:	Wed, 6 Jun 2007 12:26:10 +0200
From:	Andi Kleen <ak@...e.de>
To:	Jeremy Fitzhardinge <jeremy@...p.org>
Cc:	Jan Beulich <jbeulich@...ell.com>, Ingo Molnar <mingo@...e.hu>,
	Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>,
	virtualization@...ts.osdl.org,
	Xen-devel <xen-devel@...ts.xensource.com>,
	Chris Wright <chrisw@...s-sol.org>,
	lkml <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>, Jiri Bohac <jbohac@...e.cz>
Subject: Re: [Xen-devel] [patch 14/33] xen: xen time implementation

On Wednesday 06 June 2007 12:05:22 Jeremy Fitzhardinge wrote:
> Jan Beulich wrote:
> > Xen itself knows to deal with this (by using an error correction factor to
> > slow down the local [TSC-based] clock), but for the kernel such a situation
> > may be fatal: If clocksource->cycle_last was most recently set on a CPU
> > with shadow->tsc_to_nsec_mul sufficiently different from that where
> > getnstimeofday() is being used, timekeeping.c's __get_nsec_offset() will
> > calculate a huge nanosecond value (due to cyc2ns() doing unsigned
> > operations), worth abut 4000s. This value may then be used to set a
> > timeout that was intended to be a few milliseconds, effectively yielding
> > a hung app (and perhaps system).
> >   
> 
> Hm.  I had a similar situation in the stolen time code, and I ended up
> using signed values so I could clamp at zero.  Though that might have
> been another bug; either way, the clamp is still there.
> 
> I wonder if cyc2ns might not be better using signed operations?  Or
> perhaps better, the time code should endevour to do things on a
> completely per-cpu basis (haven't really given this any thought).

This is being worked on.


> > Unfortunately so far I haven't been able to think of a reasonable solution
> > to this - a simplistic approach like making xen_clocksource_read() check
> > the value it is about to return against the last value it returned doesn't
> > seem to be a good idea (time might appear to have stopped over some
> > period of time otherwise), nor does attempting to adjust the shadowed
> > tsc_to_nsec_mul values (because the kernel can't know whether it should
> > boost the lagging CPU or throttle the rushing one).
> 
> I once had some code in there to do that, implemented in very boneheaded
> way with a spinlock to protect the "last time returned" variable.  I
> expect there's a better way to implement it.

But any per CPU setup likely needs this to avoid non monotonicity 

-Andi
 
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