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authorPaul E. McKenney <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com>2014-10-27 17:15:54 +0100
committerPaul E. McKenney <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com>2014-10-28 21:24:13 +0100
commitd7e29933969e5ca7c112ce1368a07911f4485dc2 (patch)
tree435005d019d5b815b16a54a28d376f81a05164ab /Documentation/RCU/stallwarn.txt
parentrcu: More on deadlock between CPU hotplug and expedited grace periods (diff)
downloadlinux-d7e29933969e5ca7c112ce1368a07911f4485dc2.tar.xz
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rcu: Make rcu_barrier() understand about missing rcuo kthreads
Commit 35ce7f29a44a (rcu: Create rcuo kthreads only for onlined CPUs) avoids creating rcuo kthreads for CPUs that never come online. This fixes a bug in many instances of firmware: Instead of lying about their age, these systems instead lie about the number of CPUs that they have. Before commit 35ce7f29a44a, this could result in huge numbers of useless rcuo kthreads being created. It appears that experience indicates that I should have told the people suffering from this problem to fix their broken firmware, but I instead produced what turned out to be a partial fix. The missing piece supplied by this commit makes sure that rcu_barrier() knows not to post callbacks for no-CBs CPUs that have not yet come online, because otherwise rcu_barrier() will hang on systems having firmware that lies about the number of CPUs. It is tempting to simply have rcu_barrier() refuse to post a callback on any no-CBs CPU that does not have an rcuo kthread. This unfortunately does not work because rcu_barrier() is required to wait for all pending callbacks. It is therefore required to wait even for those callbacks that cannot possibly be invoked. Even if doing so hangs the system. Given that posting a callback to a no-CBs CPU that does not yet have an rcuo kthread can hang rcu_barrier(), It is tempting to report an error in this case. Unfortunately, this will result in false positives at boot time, when it is perfectly legal to post callbacks to the boot CPU before the scheduler has started, in other words, before it is legal to invoke rcu_barrier(). So this commit instead has rcu_barrier() avoid posting callbacks to CPUs having neither rcuo kthread nor pending callbacks, and has it complain bitterly if it finds CPUs having no rcuo kthread but some pending callbacks. And when rcu_barrier() does find CPUs having no rcuo kthread but pending callbacks, as noted earlier, it has no choice but to hang indefinitely. Reported-by: Yanko Kaneti <yaneti@declera.com> Reported-by: Jay Vosburgh <jay.vosburgh@canonical.com> Reported-by: Meelis Roos <mroos@linux.ee> Reported-by: Eric B Munson <emunson@akamai.com> Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com> Tested-by: Eric B Munson <emunson@akamai.com> Tested-by: Jay Vosburgh <jay.vosburgh@canonical.com> Tested-by: Yanko Kaneti <yaneti@declera.com> Tested-by: Kevin Fenzi <kevin@scrye.com> Tested-by: Meelis Roos <mroos@linux.ee>
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