netdev - Re: question about softirqs

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Message-ID: <4A0AE19D.9040509@nortel.com>
Date:	Wed, 13 May 2009 09:05:01 -0600
From:	"Chris Friesen" <cfriesen@...tel.com>
To:	Andi Kleen <andi@...stfloor.org>
CC:	Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>, Ingo Molnar <mingo@...e.hu>,
	Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@...llo.nl>,
	Steven Rostedt <rostedt@...dmis.org>,
	David Miller <davem@...emloft.net>, linuxppc-dev@...abs.org,
	paulus@...ba.org, netdev@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: question about softirqs

Andi Kleen wrote:
> Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de> writes:

>>Err, no. Chris is completely correct:
>>
>>        if (!in_interrupt())
>>		wakeup_softirqd();
> 
> Yes you have to wake it up just in case, but it doesn't normally
> process the data because a normal softirq comes in faster. It's
> just a safety policy. 

What about the scenario I raised earlier, where we have incoming network
packets, no hardware interrupts coming in other than the timer tick, and
a high-priority userspace app is spinning on recvmsg() with MSG_DONTWAIT
set?

As far as I can tell, in this scenario softirqs may not get processed on
return from a syscall (contradicting the documentation).  In the worst
case, they may not get processed until the next timer tick.

Chris
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