linux-kernel - Re: [RFC][PATCH] CPUSets: Move most calls to rebuild_sched

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Message-ID: <6599ad830806261334y6def5f7an57ac8f071a08eb4b@mail.gmail.com>
Date:	Thu, 26 Jun 2008 13:34:11 -0700
From:	"Paul Menage" <menage@...gle.com>
To:	"Max Krasnyansky" <maxk@...lcomm.com>
Cc:	"Vegard Nossum" <vegard.nossum@...il.com>,
	"Paul Jackson" <pj@....com>, a.p.zijlstra@...llo.nl,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, "Gautham shenoy" <ego@...ibm.com>
Subject: Re: [RFC][PATCH] CPUSets: Move most calls to rebuild_sched_domains() to the workqueue

On Thu, Jun 26, 2008 at 11:49 AM, Max Krasnyansky <maxk@...lcomm.com> wrote:
>>
>> Does that mean that you can't ever call get_online_cpus() from a
>> workqueue thread?
>
> In general it should be ok (no different from user-space task calling it).

No, I think it is a problem.

When a CPU goes down, the hotplug code holds cpu_hotplug.lock and
calls cleanup_workqueue_thread() which waits for any running work on
that thread to finish.

So if the workqueue thread running on that CPU calls get_online_cpus()
while the hotplug thread is waiting for it, it will deadlock. (It's
not clear to me how lockdep figured this out - I guess it's something
to do with the *_acquire() annotations that tell lockdep to treat the
workqueue structure as a pseudo-lock?)

I guess the fix for that would be to have a non-workqueue thread to
handle the async domain rebuilding, which isn't tied to a particular
cpu the way workqueue threads are.

> But there is still circular dependency because we're calling into
> domain partitioning code.

OK, so the problem is that since cpu_hotplug contains a hand-rolled
rwsem, lockdep is going to spot false deadlocks.

Is there any reason not to replace cpu_hotplug.lock and
cpu_hotplug.refcount with an rw_semaphore, and have the following:

void get_online_cpus(void)
{
        might_sleep();
        if (cpu_hotplug.active_writer == current)
                return;
        down_read(&cpu_hotplug.lock);
}

void put_online_cpus(void)
{
        if (cpu_hotplug.active_writer == current)
                return;
        up_read(&cpu_hotplug.lock);
}

static void cpu_hotplug_begin(void)
{
        down_write(&cpu_hotplug.lock);
        cpu_hotplug.active_writer = current;
}

static void cpu_hotplug_done(void)
{
        cpu_hotplug.active_writer = NULL;
        up_write(&cpu_hotplug.lock);
}

I think that combined with moving the async rebuild_sched_domains to a
separate thread should solve the problem, but I'm wondering why
cpu_hotplug.lock was implemented this way in the first place.

Paul
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