On 06/15/2013 10:21 AM, Peter Hurley wrote:
Acquiring the write_wait queue spin lock now accounts for the largest slice of cpu time on the tty write path. Two factors contribute to this situation; a overly-pessimistic line discipline write loop which _always_ sets up a wait loop even if i/o will immediately succeed, and on ptys, a wakeup storm from reads and writes. Writer wakeup does not need to be performed by the pty driver. Firstly, since the actual i/o is performed within the write, the line discipline write loop will continue while space remains in the flip buffers. Secondly, when space becomes avail in the line discipline receive buffer (and thus also in the flip buffers), the pty unthrottle re-wakes the writer (non-flow-controlled line disciplines unconditionally unthrottle the driver when data is received). Thus, existing in-kernel i/o is guaranteed to advance. Finally, writer wakeup occurs at the conclusion of the line discipline write (in tty_write_unlock()). This guarantees that any user-space write waiters are woken to continue additional i/o.
Greg, I thought I should let you know I'm tracking down a bug/regression related to this patch. In certain unusual pty/ldisc configurations, i/o fails to make forward progress. I still stand by my commit message above, so I'm in the process of instrumenting the i/o path so I can uncover the cause of the failure. I would still recommend applying this patch to tty-next, as it resolves a much more critical bug discussed here [1]. Doing a write_wakeup() from a driver .write() method is a no-no; recursion is possible and results in a thread stack overrun. Regards, Peter Hurley [1] https://lkml.org/lkml/2013/7/1/308
Signed-off-by: Peter Hurley <peter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> --- drivers/tty/pty.c | 4 +--- 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 3 deletions(-) diff --git a/drivers/tty/pty.c b/drivers/tty/pty.c index 0634dd9..b9bc5be 100644 --- a/drivers/tty/pty.c +++ b/drivers/tty/pty.c @@ -121,10 +121,8 @@ static int pty_write(struct tty_struct *tty, const unsigned char *buf, int c) /* Stuff the data into the input queue of the other end */ c = tty_insert_flip_string(to->port, buf, c); /* And shovel */ - if (c) { + if (c) tty_flip_buffer_push(to->port); - tty_wakeup(tty); - } } return c; }
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