linux-kernel - Re: linux-next ppc64: RCU mods cause __might

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Message-ID: <alpine.LSU.2.00.1205071421130.1920@eggly.anvils>
Date:	Mon, 7 May 2012 14:38:24 -0700 (PDT)
From:	Hugh Dickins <hughd@...gle.com>
To:	"Paul E. McKenney" <paulmck@...ux.vnet.ibm.com>
cc:	Benjamin Herrenschmidt <benh@...nel.crashing.org>,
	"Paul E. McKenney" <paul.mckenney@...aro.org>,
	Christoph Lameter <cl@...ux-foundation.org>,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, linuxppc-dev@...ts.ozlabs.org
Subject: Re: linux-next ppc64: RCU mods cause __might_sleep BUGs

On Mon, 7 May 2012, Paul E. McKenney wrote:
> On Mon, May 07, 2012 at 09:21:54AM -0700, Hugh Dickins wrote:
> > 
> > In 70 hours I got six isolated messages like the below (but from
> > different __might_sleep callsites) - where before I'd have flurries
> > of hundreds(?) and freeze within the hour.
> > 
> > And the "rcu_nesting" debug line I'd added to the message was different:
> > where before it was showing ffffffff on some tasks and 1 on others i.e.
> > increment or decrement had been applied to the wrong task, these messages
> > now all showed 0s throughout i.e. by the time the message was printed,
> > there was no longer any justification for the message.
> > 
> > As if a memory barrier were missing somewhere, perhaps.
> 
> These fields should be updated only by the corresponding CPU, so
> if memory barriers are needed, it seems to me that the cross-CPU
> access is the bug, not the lack of a memory barrier.

Yes: the code you added appeared to be using local CPU accesses only
(very much intentionally), and the context switch should already have
provided all the memory barriers needed there.

> 
> Ah...  Is preemption disabled across the access to RCU's nesting level
> when printing out the message?  If not, a preeemption at that point
> could result in the value printed being inaccurate.

Preemption was enabled in the cases I saw.  So you're pointing out that
#define rcu_preempt_depth() (__this_cpu_read(rcu_read_lock_nesting))
should have been
#define rcu_preempt_depth() (this_cpu_read(rcu_read_lock_nesting))
to avoid the danger of spurious __might_sleep() warnings.

Yes, I believe you've got it - thanks.

Hugh
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