lkml.org 
[lkml]   [2006]   [Aug]   [28]   [last100]   RSS Feed
Views: [wrap][no wrap]   [headers]  [forward] 
 
Messages in this thread
/
SubjectRe: Is stopmachine() preempt safe?
From
Date
On Mon, 2006-08-28 at 16:36 +1000, Keith Owens wrote:
> There is a lot of code in the kernel that runs cpu_online_map without
> taking any locks and without disabling preemption. Obviously we do not
> want all that code to lock or disable preemption, it will kill
> scalability.

There is actually not much code which should use cpu_online_map. Code
which does must be careful: you generally need to think about handling
cpu hotplug notifiers as well as the map changing underneath you.

Doing a brief audit, ignoring the already-acknowledged cpufreq code and
arch-specifics, I can see these cases which seem suspicious:

./drivers/acpi/processor_core.c:acpi_processor_handle_eject()
- I assume this is relying on some other mechanism so the cpu
doesn't get onlined?
- A couple of other num_online_cpus() there in ACPI might need a
rethink for hotplug CPU though.

./kernel/irq/proc.c: irq_affinity_write_proc()
- seems complicated, but I think migration.c handles when cpus
gone offline?

./drivers/oprofile/cpu_buffer.c:
- needs to handle hotplug cpus (or just say don't do that?)

./drivers/infiniband/hw/ipath/ipath_file_ops.c:
- seems to be using num_online_cpus as a really poor heuristic,
and incorrectly (for i = 0; i < num_online_cpus(); i++) <-- i is
not a valid CPU number!).

./kernel/power/main.c:suspend_prepare()
- suspicious, code here, too.

./net/core/dev.c: net_dma_rebalance()
- This is a heuristic, which may be OK.
./net/core/dev.c: softnet_get_online()
- It'd be nice if net/dev/core.c used cpu_possible() not
cpu_online() to report stats, so they don't get lost from
offlined CPUs.

./net/core/pktgen.c: pg_init()
- Assumes no CPU plugging, but is a pretty specialized driver.

(Other uses get away with being in initcalls, or on platforms without
hotplug CPU).

Disappointingly, none of these would be fixed by changing the semantics
of stop_machine; they rely on the online cpus and must take action when
they change, whether they are reading the online_cpu_map at the time or
not.

Rusty.
--
Help! Save Australia from the worst of the DMCA: http://linux.org.au/law

-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/

\
 
 \ /
  Last update: 2006-08-28 11:23    [W:0.040 / U:0.512 seconds]
©2003-2020 Jasper Spaans|hosted at Digital Ocean and TransIP|Read the blog|Advertise on this site