Message-ID: <20240906115015.GA16423@willie-the-truck>
Date: Fri, 6 Sep 2024 12:50:15 +0100
From: Will Deacon <will@...nel.org>
To: Robin Murphy <robin.murphy@....com>
Cc: mark.rutland@....com, linux-arm-kernel@...ts.infradead.org,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, jialong.yang@...ngroup.cn
Subject: Re: [PATCH v3 2/3] perf: Add driver for Arm NI-700 interconnect PMU

On Wed, Sep 04, 2024 at 06:15:24PM +0100, Robin Murphy wrote:
> On 2024-09-04 1:24 pm, Will Deacon wrote:
> > On Mon, Sep 02, 2024 at 07:47:18PM +0100, Robin Murphy wrote:
> > > On 02/09/2024 3:47 pm, Will Deacon wrote:
> > > > > +static ssize_t arm_ni_format_show(struct device *dev,
> > > > > +				  struct device_attribute *attr, char *buf)
> > > > > +{
> > > > > +	struct arm_ni_format_attr *fmt = container_of(attr, typeof(*fmt), attr);
> > > > > +	int lo = __ffs(fmt->field), hi = __fls(fmt->field);
> > > > > +
> > > > > +	return sysfs_emit(buf, "config:%d-%d\n", lo, hi);
> > > > > +}
> > > > 
> > > > Nit: if you end up adding single-bit config fields in the future, this
> > > > will quietly do the wrong thing. Maybe safe-guard the 'lo==hi' case (even
> > > > if you just warn once and return without doing anything).
> > > 
> > > The counter-argument is that I don't foresee having any reason to add
> > > single-bit config fields here in future, nor indeed config1 or config2
> > > fields, so I intentionally pruned the would-be dead code while copy-pasting
> > > this implementation from arm-cmn. Yes, if someone were to make an incomplete
> > > change without paying attention or testing they could introduce a bug, but
> > > when is that ever not true?
> > 
> > I guess I'm just a little more wary when it comes to UAPI. Somebody starts
> > relying on the broken message and then you're toast. It's also incredibly
> > easy to avoid by construction and the dead code isn't hurting anybody.
> 
> Even presuming some theoretical unreviewed broken patch did get merged and
> into real-world kernels without ever being fixed, I still struggle to
> imagine how userspace could somehow grow to *rely* on one PMU driver
> displaying a format attribute in an unexpected manner inconsistent with
> every other PMU driver, as opposed to the far more likely scenario of going
> wrong trying to parse it.

I think you lose the game when you try to imagine what userspace could do :)

But c'mon, this is simple to address and then we don't have to imagine
anything.

> Anyway, after playing with some fun compile-time checks yesterday I've just
> realised there is actually an even simpler solution for doing the right
> thing in general, so I guess thanks for leaning on this :)

Hurrah! Thanks.

> > > > > +	name = devm_kasprintf(ni->dev, GFP_KERNEL, "arm_ni_%d_cd_%d", ni->id, cd->id);
> > > > > +	if (!name)
> > > > > +		return -ENOMEM;
> > > > > +
> > > > > +	err = cpuhp_state_add_instance(arm_ni_hp_state, &cd->cpuhp_node);
> > > > > +	if (err)
> > > > > +		return err;
> > > > 
> > > > What happens if there's a CPU hotplug operation here? Can we end up calling
> > > > perf_pmu_migrate_context() concurrently with perf_pmu_register()?
> > > 
> > > Yes. Alternatively we could register the PMU before the hotplug handler,
> > > then potentially miss a hotplug event and leave a user-visible PMU
> > > associated with an invalid CPU. This is a known issue for all system PMU
> > > drivers, and the conclusion 5 years ago was that it's impractical to close
> > > this race from outside perf core itself[1][2].
> > 
> > Ok, I'm going to walk right into the trap you've set me...
> > 
> > Why can't we prevent hotplug (e.g. with cpus_read_lock()) while we're
> > setting this up?
> > 
> > ... and climbing back out of that trap, is the conversation you had with
> > Thomas written down anywhere?
> 
> I think that must have been the time we talked in person in Cambridge. I
> can't now remember if there is (or was) anything in perf_pmu_register()
> that's actually incompatible with being called under cpus_read_lock(), but I
> do recall that the overall concept of exporting more bits of the hotplug
> machinery in order to copy-paste the same boilerplate bodge in every PMU
> driver was... unpopular.

Unpopular, maybe, but you only have to look at a few PMU drivers to see
we're already in that situation for other aspects of the code.
Consolidation would be welcome, but I'd sooner have boilerplate code
than bugs.

> > I don't want to block this patch, but if five years has passed with
> > nobody looking at this then we probably need to address that at some
> > point before adding more and more broken drivers.
> 
> Looking at it again, is there actually a problem with the current state of
> things? Following through the call path:
> 
>   perf_pmu_migrate_context()
>     __perf_pmu_remove()
>       perf_event_groups_first()
>         __group_cmp()
>           perf_event_groups_cmp()
> 
> the "pmu" pointer only seems to be used as a key to match events in the
> current CPU context, which obviously won't find anything at this point.
> AFAICS it's never even dereferenced, unless any events *are* found for
> __perf_pmu_install() to do something with, which necessarily implies an
> initialised and registered PMU for them to have been opened in the first
> place.

You might well be right, but this could will change in future and I don't
think it's been written to work safely under this race. I also pointed
out that a similar race exists on the unregister path.

Will

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