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Bug 1431104

Summary: cpu hotplug: Document why PREEMPT_RT uses a spinlock
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Reporter: John Kacur <jkacur>
Component: kernel-rtAssignee: John Kacur <jkacur>
kernel-rt sub component: Other QA Contact: Jiri Kastner <jkastner>
Status: CLOSED ERRATA Docs Contact:
Severity: medium    
Priority: medium CC: bhu, jshortt, lgoncalv, williams
Version: 7.4   
Target Milestone: rc   
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: Unspecified   
OS: Unspecified   
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version: Doc Type: If docs needed, set a value
Doc Text:
Story Points: ---
Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: 2017-08-01 19:02:59 UTC Type: Bug
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
Documentation: --- CRM:
Verified Versions: Category: ---
oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:
Bug Depends On:    
Bug Blocks: 1353018, 1410158    
Attachments:
Description Flags
cpu hotplug: Document why PREEMPT_RT uses a spinlock
none
cpu hotplug: Document why PREEMPT_RT uses a spinlock none

Description John Kacur 2017-03-10 12:09:51 UTC
he patch:

    cpu: Make hotplug.lock a "sleeping" spinlock on RT

    Tasks can block on hotplug.lock in pin_current_cpu(), but their
    state might be != RUNNING. So the mutex wakeup will set the state
    unconditionally to RUNNING. That might cause spurious unexpected
    wakeups. We could provide a state preserving mutex_lock() function,
    but this is semantically backwards. So instead we convert the
    hotplug.lock() to a spinlock for RT, which has the state preserving
    semantics already.

Fixed a bug where the hotplug lock on PREEMPT_RT can be called after a
task set its state to TASK_UNINTERRUPTIBLE and before it called
schedule. If the hotplug_lock used a mutex, and there was contention,
the current task's state would be turned to TASK_RUNNABLE and the
schedule call will not sleep. This caused unexpected results.

Although the patch had a description of the change, the code had no
comments about it. This causes confusion to those that review the code,
and as PREEMPT_RT is held in a quilt queue and not git, it's not as easy
to see why a change was made. Even if it was in git, the code should
still have a comment for something as subtle as this.

Document the rational for using a spinlock on PREEMPT_RT in the hotplug
lock code.

Reported-by: Nicholas Mc Guire <der.herr>
Signed-off-by: Steven Rostedt <rostedt>
Signed-off-by: Sebastian Andrzej Siewior <bigeasy>

Comment 2 John Kacur 2017-03-10 12:15:33 UTC
Created attachment 1261918 [details]
cpu hotplug: Document why PREEMPT_RT uses a spinlock

Comment 3 John Kacur 2017-03-13 17:55:33 UTC
Created attachment 1262535 [details]
cpu hotplug: Document why PREEMPT_RT uses a spinlock

Comment 5 John Kacur 2017-04-20 23:54:27 UTC
Fixed with 5a8913f36f0d

Comment 8 errata-xmlrpc 2017-08-01 19:02:59 UTC
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/RHSA-2017:2077

Comment 9 errata-xmlrpc 2017-08-02 00:25:36 UTC
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/RHSA-2017:2077