linux-kernel - [PATCH tip/core/rcu 03/16] documentation: Slow systems can stall RCU grace periods

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Date:   Wed,  4 Oct 2017 14:21:13 -0700
From:   "Paul E. McKenney" <paulmck@...ux.vnet.ibm.com>
To:     linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Cc:     mingo@...nel.org, jiangshanlai@...il.com, dipankar@...ibm.com,
        akpm@...ux-foundation.org, mathieu.desnoyers@...icios.com,
        josh@...htriplett.org, tglx@...utronix.de, peterz@...radead.org,
        rostedt@...dmis.org, dhowells@...hat.com, edumazet@...gle.com,
        fweisbec@...il.com, oleg@...hat.com,
        "Paul E. McKenney" <paulmck@...ux.vnet.ibm.com>
Subject: [PATCH tip/core/rcu 03/16] documentation: Slow systems can stall RCU grace periods

If a fast system has a worst-case grace-period duration of (say) ten
seconds, then running the same workload on a system ten times as slow
will get you an RCU CPU stall warning given default stall-warning
timeout settings.  This commit therefore adds this possibility to
stallwarn.txt.

Reported-by: Daniel Lezcano <daniel.lezcano@...aro.org>
Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@...ux.vnet.ibm.com>
---
 Documentation/RCU/stallwarn.txt | 6 ++++++
 1 file changed, 6 insertions(+)

diff --git a/Documentation/RCU/stallwarn.txt b/Documentation/RCU/stallwarn.txt
index 21b8913acbdf..238acbd94917 100644
--- a/Documentation/RCU/stallwarn.txt
+++ b/Documentation/RCU/stallwarn.txt
@@ -70,6 +70,12 @@ o	A periodic interrupt whose handler takes longer than the time
 	considerably longer than normal, which can in turn result in
 	RCU CPU stall warnings.
 
+o	Testing a workload on a fast system, tuning the stall-warning
+	timeout down to just barely avoid RCU CPU stall warnings, and then
+	running the same workload with the same stall-warning timeout on a
+	slow system.  Note that thermal throttling and on-demand governors
+	can cause a single system to be sometimes fast and sometimes slow!
+
 o	A hardware or software issue shuts off the scheduler-clock
 	interrupt on a CPU that is not in dyntick-idle mode.  This
 	problem really has happened, and seems to be most likely to
-- 
2.5.2