linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH 3/3] workqueue: Add anon workqueue sysfs hierarchy

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Date:	Mon, 17 Mar 2014 15:02:01 +0100
From:	Frederic Weisbecker <fweisbec@...il.com>
To:	Kevin Hilman <khilman@...aro.org>
Cc:	LKML <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	Christoph Lameter <cl@...ux.com>,
	Mike Galbraith <bitbucket@...ine.de>,
	"Paul E. McKenney" <paulmck@...ux.vnet.ibm.com>,
	Tejun Heo <tj@...nel.org>,
	Viresh Kumar <viresh.kumar@...aro.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 3/3] workqueue: Add anon workqueue sysfs hierarchy

On Fri, Mar 14, 2014 at 12:08:39PM -0700, Kevin Hilman wrote:
> Frederic Weisbecker <fweisbec@...il.com> writes:
> 
> > We call "anon workqueues" the set of unbound workqueues that don't
> > carry the WQ_SYSFS flag.
> >
> > They are a problem nowaday because people who work on CPU isolation
> > (HPC, Real time, etc...) want to be able to migrate all the unbound
> > workqueues away to a single CPU. This control is possible through sysfs
> > but only with WQ_SYSFS workqueues.
> >
> > Now we need to deal with the other unbound workqueues. There is two
> > possible solutions:
> >
> > 1) Implement a sysfs directory for each unbound !WQ_SYSFS. This could
> > be done with a specific Kconfig to make sure that these workqueue
> > won't be considered as a stable ABI. But we all know that all distros
> > will enable this Kconfig symbol and that a warning in the Kconfig help
> > text won't protect against anything.
> >
> > 2) Implement a single sysfs directory containing only the cpumask file
> > to the control the affinity of all the !WQ_SYSFS workqueues.
> >
> > This patch implements the second solution.
> >
> > Two issues I have seen though:
> >
> > * This triggers the following warning in apply_workqueue_attrs():
> >
> > 	/* creating multiple pwqs breaks ordering guarantee */
> > 	if (WARN_ON((wq->flags & __WQ_ORDERED) && !list_empty(&wq->pwqs)))
> > 		return -EINVAL;
> >
> >   I haven't yet checked into the details.
> 
> I tried to test this series and ran into this too for the kmmcd
> workqueue.  Looking at the commit that introduced this check, it looks
> changing attributes will break the ordering constraints[1], so it's
> prevented all together.  hmmm...
> 
> Kevin
> 
> [1]
> commit 8719dceae2f98a578507c0f6b49c93f320bd729c
> Author: Tejun Heo <tj@...nel.org>
> Date:   Tue Mar 12 11:30:04 2013 -0700
> 
> workqueue: reject adjusting max_active or applying attrs to ordered
> workqueues
> 
> Adjusting max_active of or applying new workqueue_attrs to an ordered
> workqueue breaks its ordering guarantee.  The former is obvious.  The
> latter is because applying attrs creates a new pwq (pool_workqueue) and
> there is no ordering constraint between the old and new pwqs.

Ah I see. The way apply_workqueue_attrs() applies the cpumask with the pwqs creation
does break ordering.

Hmm, looks like some more plumbing is required.

> 
> Make apply_workqueue_attrs() and workqueue_set_max_active() trigger
> WARN_ON() if those operations are requested on an ordered workqueue
> and fail / ignore respectively.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Tejun Heo <tj@...nel.org>
> Reviewed-by: Lai Jiangshan <laijs@...fujitsu.com>
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