When using the CPU hotplug infrastructure to offline/online CPUs, the cpu_up() and cpu_down() functions are used, which internally call _cpu_up() and _cpu_down() with the second argument *always* set to 0. The second argument is "tasks_frozen", which should be correctly set to 1 when tasks have been frozen, even when the freezing of tasks may be due to an event unrelated to CPU hotplug, such as a suspend operation in progress, in which case the freezer subsystem freezes all the freezable tasks. Not giving the correct value for the 'tasks_frozen' argument can potentially lead to a lot of issues since this will send wrong notifications via the notifier mechanism leading to the execution of inappropriate code by the callbacks registered for the notifiers. That is, instead of CPU_ONLINE_FROZEN and CPU_DEAD_FROZEN notifications, it results in CPU_ONLINE and CPU_DEAD notifications to be sent all the time, irrespective of the actual state of the system (i.e., whether tasks are frozen or not). This patch introduces a flag to indicate whether the tasks are frozen are not (by any event) and modifies cpu_up() and cpu_down() functions to check the value of this flag and accordingly call _cpu_up() and _cpu_down() respectively by supplying the correct value as the second argument based on the state of the system. This in turn means that the correct notifications are sent, thus ensuring that all the registered callbacks do the right thing. Additionally, to ensure that the tasks are not frozen or thawed by the freezer subsystem while the registered callbacks are running, this patch adds a few notifications in the freezer which is then hooked onto by the CPU hotplug code, to avoid this race. v3: * Added synchronization between CPU hotplug and the freezer subsystem without introducing any new locks in the CPU hotplug call path. v2: * Removed the atomic_t declaration of tasks_frozen flag and the atomic_[set|read] functions since they were unnecessary. * Updated the changelog to give an example scenario where things could go wrong due to the bug in the CPU hotplug call path. References: v1 -> http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/1198312/ v2 -> http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/1198312/focus=1199087 -- Srivatsa S. Bhat (3): CPU hotplug, Freezer: Don't hardcode 'tasks_frozen' argument in _cpu_*() CPU hotplug, Freezer: Synchronize CPU hotplug and freezer PM, Freezer, Docs: Update documentation about the new freezer notifiers Documentation/power/notifiers.txt | 8 ++++ include/linux/freezer.h | 2 + include/linux/suspend.h | 6 ++- kernel/cpu.c | 76 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++- kernel/power/process.c | 32 +++++++++++++++- 5 files changed, 120 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-) -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-doc" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html