linux-kernel - [PATCH RT] rt: Make cpu_chill() use hrtimer instead of msleep()

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Date:	Wed, 5 Feb 2014 11:51:25 -0500
From:	Steven Rostedt <rostedt@...dmis.org>
To:	LKML <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	linux-rt-users <linux-rt-users@...r.kernel.org>
Cc:	Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>,
	Sebastian Andrzej Siewior <bigeasy@...utronix.de>,
	Clark Williams <williams@...hat.com>,
	"Luis Claudio R. Goncalves" <lclaudio@...g.org>,
	John Kacur <jkacur@...hat.com>,
	Ulrich Obergfell <uobergfe@...hat.com>
Subject: [PATCH RT] rt: Make cpu_chill() use hrtimer instead of msleep()

Ulrich Obergfell pointed out that cpu_chill() calls msleep() which is woken
up by the ksoftirqd running the TIMER softirq. But as the cpu_chill() is
called from softirq context, it may block the ksoftirqd() from running, in
which case, it may never wake up the msleep() causing the deadlock.

I checked the vmcore, and irq/74-qla2xxx is stuck in the msleep() call,
running on CPU 8. The one ksoftirqd that is stuck, happens to be the one that
runs on CPU 8, and it is blocked on a lock held by irq/74-qla2xxx. As that
ksoftirqd is the one that will wake up irq/74-qla2xxx, and it happens to be
blocked on a lock that irq/74-qla2xxx holds, we have our deadlock.

The solution is not to convert the cpu_chill() back to a cpu_relax() as that
will re-create a possible live lock that the cpu_chill() fixed earlier, and may
also leave this bug open on other softirqs. The fix is to remove the
dependency on ksoftirqd from cpu_chill(). That is, instead of calling
msleep() that requires ksoftirqd to wake it up, use the
hrtimer_nanosleep() code that does the wakeup from hard irq context.

Found-by: Ulrich Obergfell <uobergfe@...hat.com>
Signed-off-by: Steven Rostedt <rostedt@...dmis.org>

diff --git a/include/linux/delay.h b/include/linux/delay.h
index e23a7c0..37caab3 100644
--- a/include/linux/delay.h
+++ b/include/linux/delay.h
@@ -53,7 +53,7 @@ static inline void ssleep(unsigned int seconds)
 }

 #ifdef CONFIG_PREEMPT_RT_FULL
-# define cpu_chill()	msleep(1)
+extern void cpu_chill(void);
 #else
 # define cpu_chill()	cpu_relax()
 #endif
diff --git a/kernel/hrtimer.c b/kernel/hrtimer.c
index aa5eb4f..2f023aa 100644
--- a/kernel/hrtimer.c
+++ b/kernel/hrtimer.c
@@ -1852,6 +1852,21 @@ SYSCALL_DEFINE2(nanosleep, struct timespec __user *, rqtp,
 	return hrtimer_nanosleep(&tu, rmtp, HRTIMER_MODE_REL, CLOCK_MONOTONIC);
 }

+#ifdef CONFIG_PREEMPT_RT_FULL
+/*
+ * Sleep for 1 ms in hope whoever holds what we want will let it go.
+ */
+void cpu_chill(void)
+{
+	struct timespec tu = {
+		.tv_nsec = NSEC_PER_MSEC,
+	};
+
+	hrtimer_nanosleep(&tu, NULL, HRTIMER_MODE_REL, CLOCK_MONOTONIC);
+}
+EXPORT_SYMBOL(cpu_chill);
+#endif
+
 /*
  * Functions related to boot-time initialization:
  */
--
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