linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH] slow_work_thread() should do the exclusive wait

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Message-ID: <20090413222451.GA2758@redhat.com>
Date:	Tue, 14 Apr 2009 00:24:51 +0200
From:	Oleg Nesterov <oleg@...hat.com>
To:	Trond Myklebust <Trond.Myklebust@...app.com>
Cc:	David Howells <dhowells@...hat.com>,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
	Serge Hallyn <serue@...ibm.com>,
	Steve Dickson <steved@...hat.com>,
	Al Viro <viro@...iv.linux.org.uk>,
	Daire Byrne <Daire.Byrne@...mestore.com>,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] slow_work_thread() should do the exclusive wait

On 04/13, Trond Myklebust wrote:
>
> On Mon, 2009-04-13 at 23:48 +0200, Oleg Nesterov wrote:
> > On 04/13, David Howells wrote:
> > >
> > > Trond Myklebust <Trond.Myklebust@...app.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > > Should that really be TASK_INTERRUPTIBLE? I don't see anything obvious
> > > > in the enclosing for(;;) loop that checks for or handles signals...
> > >
> > > If it were TASK_UNINTERRUPTIBLE, it would sit there in the D-state when not
> > > doing anything.  I must admit, I thought I was calling daemonize(), but that
> > > seems to have got lost somewhere.
> >
> > daemonize() is not needed, kthread_create() creates the kernel thread which
> > ignores all signals. So it doesn't matter which state we use to sleep,
> > TASK_INTERRUPTIBLE or TASK_UNINTERRUPTIBLE.
>
> Yes, but that is precisely why it is cleaner to use
> TASK_UNINTERRUPTIBLE. It documents the fact that signal handling isn't
> needed (whether or not the thread is blocking them).

Agreed. But TASK_UNINTERRUPTIBLE can confuse a user which does
"cat /proc/loadavg" on the idle machine...

Note that, for example, worker_thread() uses TASK_INTERRUPTIBLE too, and I
think for the same reason.

I dunno.

Oleg.

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