linux-kernel - Preventing IPI sending races in arch code

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Date:	Mon, 25 Nov 2013 16:22:18 +0530
From:	Vineet Gupta <Vineet.Gupta1@...opsys.com>
To:	"linux-arch@...r.kernel.org" <linux-arch@...r.kernel.org>
CC:	Gilad Ben-Yossef <gilad@...yossef.com>,
	Noam Camus <noamc@...hip.com>,
	David Daney <david.daney@...ium.com>,
	James Hogan <james.hogan@...tec.com>,
	peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org>,
	thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>,
	lkml <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	Richard Kuo <rkuo@...eaurora.org>
Subject: Preventing IPI sending races in arch code

Hi,

I've been looking into cleaning up bitrot in ARC SMP support. Unlike some other
arches/platforms, we don't have per-msg-type IRQ, so the actual msg (say cross
function call) corresponding to IPI needs to be encoded in a per-cpu word (1 bit
per msg type) before kicking the IPI.

The current code (indicative below) is completely bonkers as it calls set_bit w/o
any protection whatsoever, clearly racy in case of multiple senders, where
receiver could end up NOT seeing one of the writes.

ipi_send_msg(cpu, msg-type)
{
   struct ipi_data *ipi_data = &per_cpu(ipi_data, cpu);

   local_irq_save();
   set_bit(msg-type, &ipi_data->bits)
   plat_smp_ops.ipi_send(cpumask)
   local_irq_restore();
}

Adding a spinlock here would serialize the sending part, but I still see issue in
receiver. Upon receipt of First IPI, the msg holding word will be atomically
exchanged with 0, so 2nd IPI will not see any msg in the word. Augmenting with an
atomic counter would only help detect the issue - but I don't see how it will help
elide the issue.

Does that mean w/o proper hardware assist (i.e. IRQ providing the msg id
indication), the race, however small, remains ?

Comments much appreciated !

-Vineet
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