On Mon, Feb 17, 2020 at 01:38:51PM +0100, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 14, 2020 at 04:25:18PM -0800, paulmck@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> > From: "Paul E. McKenney" <paulmck@xxxxxxxxxx>
> >
> > The RCU tasks list of callbacks, rcu_tasks_cbs_head, is sampled locklessly
> > by rcu_tasks_kthread() when waiting for work to do. This commit therefore
> > applies READ_ONCE() to that lockless sampling and WRITE_ONCE() to the
> > single potential store outside of rcu_tasks_kthread.
> >
> > This data race was reported by KCSAN. Not appropriate for backporting
> > due to failure being unlikely.
>
> What failure is possible here? AFAICT this is (again) one of them
> load-complare-against-constant-discard patterns that are impossible to
> mess up.
You mean that because we are only testing for NULL, so load/store tearing of
rcu_tasks_cbs_head is not an issue right?
I agree. Even with invented stores, worst case we have a false-wakeup and go
right back to sleep. Or, we read a partial rcu_tasks_cbs_head, and then go
acquire the lock and read the whole thing correctly under lock.
I wonder if we can teach KCSAN to actually ignore this kind of situation so
we don't need to employ READ_ONCE() for no reason. Basically ask it to not
bother if the read was only NULL-testing. +Marco since it is KCSAN related.
thanks,
- Joel
> > Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@xxxxxxxxxx>
> > ---
> > kernel/rcu/update.c | 4 ++--
> > 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
> >
> > diff --git a/kernel/rcu/update.c b/kernel/rcu/update.c
> > index 6c4b862..a27df76 100644
> > --- a/kernel/rcu/update.c
> > +++ b/kernel/rcu/update.c
> > @@ -528,7 +528,7 @@ void call_rcu_tasks(struct rcu_head *rhp, rcu_callback_t func)
> > rhp->func = func;
> > raw_spin_lock_irqsave(&rcu_tasks_cbs_lock, flags);
> > needwake = !rcu_tasks_cbs_head;
> > - *rcu_tasks_cbs_tail = rhp;
> > + WRITE_ONCE(*rcu_tasks_cbs_tail, rhp);
> > rcu_tasks_cbs_tail = &rhp->next;
> > raw_spin_unlock_irqrestore(&rcu_tasks_cbs_lock, flags);
> > /* We can't create the thread unless interrupts are enabled. */
> > @@ -658,7 +658,7 @@ static int __noreturn rcu_tasks_kthread(void *arg)
> > /* If there were none, wait a bit and start over. */
> > if (!list) {
> > wait_event_interruptible(rcu_tasks_cbs_wq,
> > - rcu_tasks_cbs_head);
> > + READ_ONCE(rcu_tasks_cbs_head));
> > if (!rcu_tasks_cbs_head) {
> > WARN_ON(signal_pending(current));
> > schedule_timeout_interruptible(HZ/10);
> > --
> > 2.9.5
> >
