linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH v2] random: remove batched entropy locking

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Date:   Fri, 4 Feb 2022 15:11:34 +0100
From:   "Jason A. Donenfeld" <Jason@...c4.com>
To:     Sebastian Andrzej Siewior <bigeasy@...utronix.de>
Cc:     Andy Lutomirski <luto@...capital.net>,
        Boqun Feng <boqun.feng@...il.com>,
        Will Deacon <will@...nel.org>,
        Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org>,
        Ingo Molnar <mingo@...hat.com>,
        Waiman Long <longman@...hat.com>,
        Sultan Alsawaf <sultan@...neltoast.com>,
        "Theodore Ts'o" <tytso@....edu>, Andy Lutomirski <luto@...nel.org>,
        Jonathan Neuschäfer <j.neuschaefer@....net>,
        LKML <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
        Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v2] random: remove batched entropy locking

Hi Sebastian,

On Fri, Feb 4, 2022 at 3:02 PM Sebastian Andrzej Siewior
<bigeasy@...utronix.de> wrote:
> The commit in tree you cited is b43db859a36cb553102c9c80431fc44618703bda.
> It does not mention anything regarding faster nor the performance
> improvement and conditions (hoth path, etc). It still has a stable tag.

It dropped the Cc: stable@. It still has the Fixes:. I can get rid of
the Fixes: too. I'll improve that message a bunch for a potential v3.

> > Maybe it'd be best to retain the spinlock_t, which will amount to
> > disabling interrupts on !PREEMPT_RT, since it'll never be contended,
> > but will turn into a mutex on PREEMPT_RT, where it'll do the right
> > thing from an exclusivity perspective. Would this be reasonable?
>
> what does retain the spinlock_t mean since we already have a spinlock_t?

The idea would be to keep using spinlock_t like we do now -- no change
there -- but move to using this atomic generation counter so that
there's never any contention. Actually, though, I worry that that
approach would throw out the gains we're getting by chucking the
spinlock in the first place.

What if we keep a spinlock_t there on PREEMPT_RT but stick with
disabling interrupts on !PREEMPT_RT? I wish there was a solution or an
API that amounted to the same thing so there wouldn't need to be an
#ifdef, but I don't know what that'd be.

Jason