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Subject[patch] preemptive kernel, preemptive-2.3.52-A7

On Mon, 13 Mar 2000, Linus Torvalds wrote:

> We want to avoid having long latencies, and we can easily get that by
> just allowing timer interrupts to schedule which we're in a big
> "memcpy_to_user()" and we don't hold any kernel lock etc. No need to
> try to be clever at lock release time - if we get a pending
> reschedule, we might as well leave it pending, it's going to be
> serviced soon enough anyway.

i've just implemented this (free preemption of pre-specified kernel areas)
and it's really simple, and appears to work nicely both in the UP and SMP
case.

There is a single current->may_preempt counter which is typically zero. If
the counter is non-zero, then the IRQ return path may preempt the process.
The counter is recursive (unused feature currently but same cost), and is
used in uaccess.h when the memcpy is non-constant (probably big enough.
It's cheaper to unconditionally do the incl+decl than checking for memcpy
size). Note that 'current' is already cached in 99% of these cases because
we already did an access_ok() check for the user-space copy, which
accessed current->addr_limit. The counter is persistent and present even
if the process is non-running - the 'may preempt' property of the task
does not depend on wether it's running. (This method differs from Andrea's
similar 'all-inclusive' method by having a clean per-process counter.)

i've also introduced a new light-weight 'IRQ-atomic' increment and
decrement method in atomic.h, because ->may_preempt has to be
local-IRQ-safe.

the IRQ return path in entry.S now checks wether:

1) ->need_resched or ->pending is set

and 2) wether we return to non-IRQ context

and 3) ->allow_preempt is set.

the entry.S IRQ return path got one more conditional instruction, which
checks for need_resched and moves into the 'we might preempt even
kernel-space' path. This branch comes _after_ checking all the common
cases: return-to-userspace and no-event-pending. I believe this is pretty
much the cheapest way we can get away with this. (The patch does not allow
processing signal handlers though, only reschedules - that would be a
security hole in certain cases, correct?)

the uaccess.h changes are safe because we can reschedule even with the
kernel lock held, but it's illegal to call any of the user-copy routines
with spinlocks held. (There are some other places that we want to make
preemptible as well, but i first wanted to have this simple prototype.)

the patch gets some non-obvious cases right as well: if a cross-IPI marks
the process need_resched==1 then we might reschedule immediately if it
hits a big memcpy.

i've tested the patch (against pre-2.3.52-1) and it compiles both UP and
SMP, and i've tested it under load on SMP - appears to be stable. Have i
missed anything, and is this what we want?

> If you really want hard realtime, go to work with Victor and RTLinux..

(yep.)

Ingo
--- linux/include/linux/sched.h.orig Mon Mar 13 16:49:12 2000
+++ linux/include/linux/sched.h Mon Mar 13 16:49:12 2000
@@ -268,6 +268,7 @@
*/
struct exec_domain *exec_domain;
volatile long need_resched;
+ int allow_preempt;

cycles_t avg_slice;
int lock_depth; /* Lock depth. We can context switch in and out of holding a syscall kernel lock... */
--- linux/include/asm-i386/uaccess.h.orig Mon Mar 13 16:49:12 2000
+++ linux/include/asm-i386/uaccess.h Mon Mar 13 16:54:48 2000
@@ -253,6 +253,7 @@
#define __copy_user(to,from,size) \
do { \
int __d0, __d1; \
+ current->allow_preempt++; \
__asm__ __volatile__( \
"0: rep; movsl\n" \
" movl %3,%0\n" \
@@ -270,11 +271,13 @@
: "=&c"(size), "=&D" (__d0), "=&S" (__d1) \
: "r"(size & 3), "0"(size / 4), "1"(to), "2"(from) \
: "memory"); \
+ current->allow_preempt--; \
} while (0)

#define __copy_user_zeroing(to,from,size) \
do { \
int __d0, __d1; \
+ current->allow_preempt++; \
__asm__ __volatile__( \
"0: rep; movsl\n" \
" movl %3,%0\n" \
@@ -298,6 +301,7 @@
: "=&c"(size), "=&D" (__d0), "=&S" (__d1) \
: "r"(size & 3), "0"(size / 4), "1"(to), "2"(from) \
: "memory"); \
+ current->allow_preempt--; \
} while (0)

/* We let the __ versions of copy_from/to_user inline, because they're often
--- linux/arch/i386/kernel/entry.S.orig Mon Mar 13 16:49:12 2000
+++ linux/arch/i386/kernel/entry.S Mon Mar 13 16:51:00 2000
@@ -76,7 +76,8 @@
addr_limit = 12
exec_domain = 16
need_resched = 20
-processor = 56
+allow_preempt = 24
+processor = 60

ENOSYS = 38

@@ -276,9 +277,21 @@
ALIGN
ret_from_intr:
GET_CURRENT(%ebx)
+ /*
+ * both ->need_resched and ->sigpending are relatively
+ * rare cases:
+ */
+ cmpl $0,need_resched(%ebx)
+ jne maybe_slow_return
+ cmpl $0,sigpending(%ebx)
+ jne maybe_slow_return
+ jmp restore_all
+maybe_slow_return:
movl EFLAGS(%esp),%eax # mix EFLAGS and CS
movb CS(%esp),%al
testl $(VM_MASK | 3),%eax # return to VM86 mode or non-supervisor?
+ jne ret_with_reschedule
+ cmpl $0, allow_preempt(%ebx)
jne ret_with_reschedule
jmp restore_all
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