linux-kernel - Re: [BUG] long freezes on thinkpad t60

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Message-ID: <20070621083931.GA18105@elte.hu>
Date:	Thu, 21 Jun 2007 10:39:31 +0200
From:	Ingo Molnar <mingo@...e.hu>
To:	Jarek Poplawski <jarkao2@...pl>
Cc:	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>,
	Miklos Szeredi <miklos@...redi.hu>, cebbert@...hat.com,
	chris@...ee.ca, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, tglx@...utronix.de,
	akpm@...ux-foundation.org
Subject: Re: [BUG] long freezes on thinkpad t60


* Jarek Poplawski <jarkao2@...pl> wrote:

> BTW, I've looked a bit at these NMI watchdog traces, and now I'm not 
> even sure it's necessarily the spinlock's problem (but I don't exclude 
> this possibility yet). It seems both processors use task_rq_lock(), so 
> there could be also a problem with that loop. The way the correctness 
> of the taken lock is verified is racy: there is a small probability 
> that if we have taken the wrong lock the check inside the loop is done 
> just before the value is beeing changed elsewhere under the right 
> lock. Another possible problem could be a result of some wrong 
> optimization or wrong propagation of change of this task_rq(p) value.

ok, could you elaborate this in a bit more detail? You say it's racy - 
any correctness bug in task_rq_lock() will cause the kernel to blow up 
in spectacular ways. It's a fairly straightforward loop:

 static inline struct rq *__task_rq_lock(struct task_struct *p)
         __acquires(rq->lock)
 {
         struct rq *rq;

 repeat_lock_task:
         rq = task_rq(p);
         spin_lock(&rq->lock);
         if (unlikely(rq != task_rq(p))) {
                 spin_unlock(&rq->lock);
                 goto repeat_lock_task;
         }
         return rq;
 }

the result of task_rq() depends on p->thread_info->cpu wich will only 
change if a task has migrated over to another CPU. That is a 
fundamentally 'slow' operation, but even if a task does it intentionally 
in a high frequency way (for example via repeated calls to 
sched_setaffinity) there's no way it could be faster than the spinlock 
code here. So ... what problems can you see with it?

	Ingo
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