Hmm, are you proposing this be part of tuned itself? I can see other profiles requiring the same things, so I'd hope so.

My initial idea was to make it part of the profile. That is, script.sh could implement the steps from the description in start() and then stop() could just remove 01cpumask and re-generate the initrd image.

But having it as part of tuned looks like a good idea too. I think the only problem would be to come up with a good abstraction in tuned.conf for setting this up given that dracut modules have several different options as to when the script is run in initrd.

Understood.  To me this sounds like "add dracut support to tuned" and then the first user of said feature would be this bugzilla.

I think this could be smartly resolved by static initrd overlay (with help of the RFE bug 1414098) together with the cpuaffinity kernel/systemd boot option (which was proposed in https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/5368). Even now when CPUAffinity is not supported by systemd, it can be introduced in our scripts, e.g.:

[bootloader]
cmdline=cpuaffinity=DESIRED_AFFINITY
initrd_add_dir=tuned-overlay.img

$ cat tuned-overlay.img/usr/lib/dracut/hooks/pre-udev/00-tuned-pre-udev.sh
#!/bin/sh

type getarg >/dev/null 2>&1 || . /lib/dracut-lib.sh

cpuaffinity="$(getargs cpuaffinity)"

echo "tuned setting CPUAffinity to $(getargs cpuaffinity)" > /dev/kmsg

----
Well you need CPUMask, so we could either calculate CPUMask from the CPUAffinity in the script, or just inject the CPUMask to the cmdline instead of the CPUAffinity, e.g.:

[bootloader]
cmdline=cpumask=DESIRED_CPUMASK
initrd_add_dir=tuned-overlay.img

$ cat tuned-overlay.img/usr/lib/dracut/hooks/pre-udev/00-tuned-pre-udev.sh
#!/bin/sh

type getarg >/dev/null 2>&1 || . /lib/dracut-lib.sh

cpumask="$(getargs cpumask)"

file=/sys/devices/virtual/workqueue/cpumask

log()
{
        echo "$1" >> /dev/kmsg
}

if ! echo $cpumask > $file 2>/dev/null; then
       log "ERROR: could not write cpumask"
fi

Not to cause conflicts we can set the cmdline name to e.g. tuned.cpumask or tuned-cpumask or whatever. This all should now work out of the box.

Also you can pre-generate initrd.img fully statically and use the following:

[bootloader]
cmdline=cpumask=DESIRED_CPUMASK
initrd_add_img=tuned-overlay.img

I.e. Tuned will not re-generate the tuned-overlay.img, because it's not needed.

Upstream commit introducing functionality mentioned in comment 4:
https://github.com/redhat-performance/tuned/commit/64decfe7568007cb2fde3a679ef05e366014214f

Available in:
tuned-2.7.1-1.20170303git64decfe7.el7

from:
https://jskarvad.fedorapeople.org/tuned/devel/repo/

This is working as expected. I can see on dmesg that the workqueue cpumask is being set. Also, initial zero-loss test-case passed. I'm now running a long duration test.

My tests passed, very well done!

The only detail about this one is that, I think we should change the kernel parameter "tuned.cpumask" to something more meaningful. This parameter will be visible for the entire life time of the system and "cpumask" is too generic.

Here are some suggestions (in order of preference):

tuned.housekeeping_mask
tuned.worqueue_mask
tuned.early_workqueue_mask
tuned.non_isolcpus

(In reply to Luiz Capitulino from comment #7)
> My tests passed, very well done!
> 
> The only detail about this one is that, I think we should change the kernel
> parameter "tuned.cpumask" to something more meaningful. This parameter will
> be visible for the entire life time of the system and "cpumask" is too
> generic.
> 
> Here are some suggestions (in order of preference):
> 
> tuned.housekeeping_mask
> tuned.worqueue_mask
> tuned.early_workqueue_mask
> tuned.non_isolcpus

I like the most:
tuned.non_isolcpus

because we can reuse it later for other things as well theoretically not only for teh worqueue_mask.

tuned.non_isolcpus it is :)

Upstream commit changing the kernel boot command line parameter to tuned.non_isolcpus:
https://github.com/redhat-performance/tuned/commit/6906738603b92f34f042486a8e9e924ac8531a2a

Available in:
tuned-2.7.1-1.20170307git69067386.el7

Verified in:
    tuned-2.8.0-2.el7.noarch
PASS


::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
:: [   LOG    ] :: Check setting of workqueue affinity [BZ#1395899]
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

:: [   PASS   ] :: Check message in dmesg (Expected 0, got 0)
:: [   PASS   ] :: Check isolates cores in cpumask file (Expected 0, got 0)
:: [   LOG    ] :: Duration: 1s
:: [   LOG    ] :: Assertions: 2 good, 0 bad
:: [   PASS   ] :: RESULT: Check setting of workqueue affinity [BZ#1395899]

Since the problem described in this bug report should be
resolved in a recent advisory, it has been closed with a
resolution of ERRATA.

For information on the advisory, and where to find the updated
files, follow the link below.

If the solution does not work for you, open a new bug report.

https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHBA-2017:2102