Steven Rostedt wrote:
On Thu, 2010-01-21 at 11:18 -0800, David Daney wrote:
Steven Rostedt wrote:
Peter Zijlstra and I were doing a look over of places that assign
current->state = TASK_*INTERRUPTIBLE, by simply looking at places with:
$ git grep -A1 'state[[:space:]]*=[[:space:]]*TASK_[^R]'
and it seems there are quite a few places that looks like bugs. To be on
the safe side, everything outside of a run queue lock that sets the
current state to something other than TASK_RUNNING (or dead) should be
using set_current_state().
current->state = TASK_INTERRUPTIBLE;
schedule();
is probably OK, but it would not hurt to be consistent. Here's a few
examples of likely bugs:
[...]
This may be a bit off topic, but exactly which type of barrier should
set_current_state() be implying?
On MIPS, set_mb() (which is used by set_current_state()) has a full mb().
Some MIPS based processors have a much lighter weight wmb(). Could
wmb() be used in place of mb() here?
Nope, wmb() is not enough. Below is an explanation.
If not, an explanation of the required memory ordering semantics here
would be appreciated.
I know the documentation says:
set_current_state() includes a barrier so that the write of
current->state is correctly serialised wrt the caller's subsequent
test of whether to actually sleep:
set_current_state(TASK_UNINTERRUPTIBLE);
if (do_i_need_to_sleep())
schedule();
Since the current CPU sees the memory accesses in order, what can be
happening on other CPUs that would require a full mb()?
Lets look at a hypothetical situation with:
add_wait_queue();
current->state = TASK_UNINTERRUPTIBLE;
smp_wmb();
if (!x)
schedule();
Then somewhere we probably have:
x = 1;
smp_wmb();
wake_up(queue);
CPU 0 CPU 1
------------ -----------
add_wait_queue();
(cpu pipeline sees a load
of x ahead, and preloads it)
This is what I thought.
My cpu (Cavium Octeon) does not have out of order reads, so my wmb() is
in fact a full mb() from the point of view of the current CPU. So I
think I could weaken my bariers in set_current_state() and still get
correct operation. However as you say...
x = 1;
smp_wmb();
wake_up(queue);
(task on CPU 0 is still at
TASK_RUNNING);
current->state = TASK_INTERRUPTIBLE;
smp_wmb(); <<-- does not prevent early loading of x
if (!x) <<-- returns true
schedule();
Now the task on CPU 0 missed the wake up.
Note, places that call schedule() are not fast paths, and probably not
called often. Adding the overhead of smp_mb() to ensure correctness is a
small price to pay compared to search for why you have a stuck task that
was never woken up.
... It may not be worth the trouble.
Read Documentation/memory-barriers.txt, it will be worth the time you
spend doing so.
Indeed I have read it. My questions arise because the semantics of my
barrier primitives do not map exactly to the semantics prescribed for
mb() and wmb().
A kernel programmer has only the types of barriers described in
memory-barriers.txt available. Since there is no
mb_on_current_cpu_but_only_order_writes_as_seen_by_other_cpus(), we use
a full mb() instead.
Thanks for the explanation Steve,
David Daney
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