This is a note to let you know that I've just added the patch titled rcu: Make callers awaken grace-period kthread to the 3.14-stable tree which can be found at: http://www.kernel.org/git/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/stable-queue.git;a=summary The filename of the patch is: rcu-make-callers-awaken-grace-period-kthread.patch and it can be found in the queue-3.14 subdirectory. If you, or anyone else, feels it should not be added to the stable tree, please let <stable@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> know about it. >From b433a3686a2031d9de32d49249519a851688b54a Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: "Paul E. McKenney" <paulmck@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2014 13:02:16 -0700 Subject: rcu: Make callers awaken grace-period kthread From: "Paul E. McKenney" <paulmck@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> commit 48a7639ce80cf279834d0d44865e49ecd714f37d upstream. The rcu_start_gp_advanced() function currently uses irq_work_queue() to defer wakeups of the RCU grace-period kthread. This deferring is necessary to avoid RCU-scheduler deadlocks involving the rcu_node structure's lock, meaning that RCU cannot call any of the scheduler's wake-up functions while holding one of these locks. Unfortunately, the second and subsequent calls to irq_work_queue() are ignored, and the first call will be ignored (aside from queuing the work item) if the scheduler-clock tick is turned off. This is OK for many uses, especially those where irq_work_queue() is called from an interrupt or softirq handler, because in those cases the scheduler-clock-tick state will be re-evaluated, which will turn the scheduler-clock tick back on. On the next tick, any deferred work will then be processed. However, this strategy does not always work for RCU, which can be invoked at process level from idle CPUs. In this case, the tick might never be turned back on, indefinitely defering a grace-period start request. Note that the RCU CPU stall detector cannot see this condition, because there is no RCU grace period in progress. Therefore, we can (and do!) see long tens-of-seconds stalls in grace-period handling. In theory, we could see a full grace-period hang, but rcutorture testing to date has seen only the tens-of-seconds stalls. Event tracing demonstrates that irq_work_queue() is being called repeatedly to no effect during these stalls: The "newreq" event appears repeatedly from a task that is not one of the grace-period kthreads. In theory, irq_work_queue() might be fixed to avoid this sort of issue, but RCU's requirements are unusual and it is quite straightforward to pass wake-up responsibility up through RCU's call chain, so that the wakeup happens when the offending locks are released. This commit therefore makes this change. The rcu_start_gp_advanced(), rcu_start_future_gp(), rcu_accelerate_cbs(), rcu_advance_cbs(), __note_gp_changes(), and rcu_start_gp() functions now return a boolean which indicates when a wake-up is needed. A new rcu_gp_kthread_wake() does the wakeup when it is necessary and safe to do so: No self-wakes, no wake-ups if the ->gp_flags field indicates there is no need (as in someone else did the wake-up before we got around to it), and no wake-ups before the grace-period kthread has been created. Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Steven Rostedt <rostedt@xxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Frederic Weisbecker <fweisbec@xxxxxxxxx> Reviewed-by: Josh Triplett <josh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> [ Pranith: backport to 3.13-stable: just rcu_gp_kthread_wake(), prereq for 2aa792e "rcu: Use rcu_gp_kthread_wake() to wake up grace period kthreads" ] Signed-off-by: Pranith Kumar <bobby.prani@xxxxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Kamal Mostafa <kamal@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> --- kernel/rcu/tree.c | 18 +++++++++++++++++- 1 file changed, 17 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-) --- a/kernel/rcu/tree.c +++ b/kernel/rcu/tree.c @@ -1228,6 +1228,22 @@ static int rcu_future_gp_cleanup(struct } /* + * Awaken the grace-period kthread for the specified flavor of RCU. + * Don't do a self-awaken, and don't bother awakening when there is + * nothing for the grace-period kthread to do (as in several CPUs + * raced to awaken, and we lost), and finally don't try to awaken + * a kthread that has not yet been created. + */ +static void rcu_gp_kthread_wake(struct rcu_state *rsp) +{ + if (current == rsp->gp_kthread || + !ACCESS_ONCE(rsp->gp_flags) || + !rsp->gp_kthread) + return; + wake_up(&rsp->gp_wq); +} + +/* * If there is room, assign a ->completed number to any callbacks on * this CPU that have not already been assigned. Also accelerate any * callbacks that were previously assigned a ->completed number that has @@ -1670,7 +1686,7 @@ static void rsp_wakeup(struct irq_work * struct rcu_state *rsp = container_of(work, struct rcu_state, wakeup_work); /* Wake up rcu_gp_kthread() to start the grace period. */ - wake_up(&rsp->gp_wq); + rcu_gp_kthread_wake(rsp); } /* Patches currently in stable-queue which might be from paulmck@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx are queue-3.14/rcu-use-rcu_gp_kthread_wake-to-wake-up-grace-period-kthreads.patch queue-3.14/rcu-make-callers-awaken-grace-period-kthread.patch -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe stable" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html