On Mon, Oct 30, 2023 at 01:11:41PM -0700, Paul E. McKenney wrote: > On Mon, Oct 30, 2023 at 09:21:38AM +0100, Peter Zijlstra wrote: > > On Fri, Oct 27, 2023 at 04:41:30PM -0700, Paul E. McKenney wrote: > > > On Sat, Oct 28, 2023 at 12:46:28AM +0200, Peter Zijlstra wrote: > > > > > > Nah, this is more or less what I feared. I just worry people will come > > > > around and put WRITE_ONCE() on the other end. I don't think that'll buy > > > > us much. Nor do I think the current READ_ONCE()s actually matter. > > > > > > My friend, you trust compilers more than I ever will. ;-) > > > > Well, we only use the values {0,1,2}, that's contained in the first > > byte. Are we saying compiler will not only byte-split but also > > bit-split the loads? > > > > But again, lacking the WRITE_ONCE() counterpart, this READ_ONCE() isn't > > getting you anything, and if you really worried about it, shouldn't you > > have proposed a patch making it all WRITE_ONCE() back when you did this > > tasks-rcu stuff? > > There are not all that many of them. If such a WRITE_ONCE() patch would > be welcome, I would be happy to put it together. > > > > > But perhaps put a comment there, that we don't care for the races and > > > > only need to observe a 0 once or something. > > > > > > There are these two passagers in the big lock comment preceding the > > > RCU Tasks code: > > > > > // rcu_tasks_pregp_step(): > > > // Invokes synchronize_rcu() in order to wait for all in-flight > > > // t->on_rq and t->nvcsw transitions to complete. This works because > > > // all such transitions are carried out with interrupts disabled. > > > > > Does that suffice, or should we add more? > > > > Probably sufficient. If one were to have used the search option :-) > > > > Anyway, this brings me to nvcsw, exact same problem there, except > > possibly worse, because now we actually do care about the full word. > > > > No WRITE_ONCE() write side, so the READ_ONCE() don't help against > > store-tearing (however unlikely that actually is in this case). > > Again, if such a WRITE_ONCE() patch would be welcome, I would be happy > to put it together. Welcome is not the right word. What bugs me most is that this was never raised when this code was written :/ Mostly my problem is that GCC generates such utter shite when you mention volatile. See, the below patch changes the perfectly fine and non-broken: 0148 1d8: 49 83 06 01 addq $0x1,(%r14) into: 0148 1d8: 49 8b 06 mov (%r14),%rax 014b 1db: 48 83 c0 01 add $0x1,%rax 014f 1df: 49 89 06 mov %rax,(%r14) For absolutely no reason :-( At least clang doesn't do this, it stays: 0403 413: 49 ff 45 00 incq 0x0(%r13) irrespective of the volatile. --- diff --git a/kernel/sched/core.c b/kernel/sched/core.c index 802551e0009b..d616211b9151 100644 --- a/kernel/sched/core.c +++ b/kernel/sched/core.c @@ -6575,8 +6575,8 @@ pick_next_task(struct rq *rq, struct task_struct *prev, struct rq_flags *rf) */ static void __sched notrace __schedule(unsigned int sched_mode) { struct task_struct *prev, *next; - unsigned long *switch_count; + volatile unsigned long *switch_count; unsigned long prev_state; struct rq_flags rf; struct rq *rq;