linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH] printk: robustify printk

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Message-ID: <20080811132241.GM8125@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Date:	Mon, 11 Aug 2008 06:22:41 -0700
From:	"Paul E. McKenney" <paulmck@...ux.vnet.ibm.com>
To:	Ingo Molnar <mingo@...e.hu>
Cc:	Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@...llo.nl>,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
	torvalds@...ux-foundation.org, tglx@...utronix.de,
	marcin.slusarz@...il.com, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
	davem@...emloft.net, rostedt@...dmis.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] printk: robustify printk

On Mon, Aug 11, 2008 at 12:45:26PM +0200, Ingo Molnar wrote:
> 
> * Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@...llo.nl> wrote:
> 
> > On Fri, 2008-08-08 at 21:21 +0200, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> > 
> > > The initial printk_tick() based implementation didn't suffer this
> > > problem, should we revert to that scheme?
> > 
> > Just in case people care..
> > 
> > ---
> > Subject: printk: robustify printk
> > 
> > Avoid deadlocks against rq->lock and xtime_lock by deferring the klogd 
> > wakeup by polling from the timer tick.
> 
> i missed most of the discussion, but this seems like the simplest (and 
> hence ultimately the best) approach to me.
> 
> Coupling printk with RCU, albeit elegant, does not seem like the right 
> choice to me in this specific case: printk as an essential debug 
> mechanism should be as decoupled as possible.
> 
> Also, once we accept the possibility of async klogd completion, we might 
> as well do it all the time.
> 
> i have only one sidenote:
> 
> > --- linux-2.6.orig/kernel/time/tick-sched.c
> > +++ linux-2.6/kernel/time/tick-sched.c
> > @@ -255,7 +255,7 @@ void tick_nohz_stop_sched_tick(int inidl
> >       next_jiffies = get_next_timer_interrupt(last_jiffies);
> >       delta_jiffies = next_jiffies - last_jiffies;
> >
> > -     if (rcu_needs_cpu(cpu))
> > +     if (rcu_needs_cpu(cpu) || printk_needs_cpu(cpu))
> >               delta_jiffies = 1;
> 
> this change made a previous design quirks even more visible: these are 
> items that are not purely event driven but need some polling component. 
> RCU is one, and now printk is another.
> 
> We could clean this up further by integrating the rcu_needs_cpu() and 
> printk_needs_cpu() into a softirq mechanism. We already check for 
> pending softirqs in tick-sched.c, so the above complication would go 
> away completely.

I am missing something here.  Are you suggesting that RCU call out
when a given CPU has nothing to do, rather than the current behavior
where rcu_needs_cpu() is invoked when a CPU is being considered for
dynticks idle mode?  My concern with this approach would be races that
are currently avoided by the fact that calls to rcu_needs_cpu() are
performed with hardirqs disabled.

							Thanx, Paul

> ( But that's for a separate cleanup patch i think. )
> 
> No strong feelings though. Peter, which one do you prefer?
> 
> 	Ingo
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