linux-kernel - Re: livepatch: change to a per-task consistency model

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Date:	Wed, 18 May 2016 10:16:22 +0200 (CEST)
From:	Jiri Kosina <jikos@...nel.org>
To:	Jessica Yu <jeyu@...hat.com>
cc:	Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@...hat.com>,
	Miroslav Benes <mbenes@...e.cz>,
	Ingo Molnar <mingo@...hat.com>,
	Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org>,
	Michael Ellerman <mpe@...erman.id.au>,
	Heiko Carstens <heiko.carstens@...ibm.com>,
	live-patching@...r.kernel.org, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
	x86@...nel.org, linuxppc-dev@...ts.ozlabs.org,
	linux-s390@...r.kernel.org, Vojtech Pavlik <vojtech@...e.com>,
	Jiri Slaby <jslaby@...e.cz>, Petr Mladek <pmladek@...e.com>,
	Chris J Arges <chris.j.arges@...onical.com>,
	Andy Lutomirski <luto@...nel.org>
Subject: Re: livepatch: change to a per-task consistency model

On Tue, 17 May 2016, Jessica Yu wrote:

> What about tasks sleeping on affected functions in uninterruptible sleep 
> (possibly indefinitely)? Since all signals are ignored, we wouldn't be 
> able to patch those tasks in this way, right? Would that be an 
> unsupported case?

I don't think there is any better way out of this situation than 
documenting that the convergence of patching could in such cases could 
take quite a lot of time (well, we can pro-actively try to detect this 
situation before the patching actually start, and warn about the possible 
consequences).

But let's face it, this should be pretty uncommon, because (a) it's not 
realistic for the wait times to be really indefinite (b) the task is 
likely to be in TASK_KILLABLE rather than just plain TASK_UNINTERRUPTIBLE.

-- 
Jiri Kosina
SUSE Labs