Re: 2.6.24-rc8-rt1: Strange latencies on mpc5200 powerpc - RCU issue?

From: Wolfgang Grandegger
Date: Sun Jul 06 2008 - 05:41:02 EST


Steven Rostedt wrote:
On Wed, 2 Jul 2008, Wolfgang Grandegger wrote:
I removed all "likely" and "unlikely" macros, but the latencies did not
improve. Then I added

preempt_disable();
preempt_enable();

at the two locations mentioned above, like trace_mark() does, and
disabled CONFIG_RCU_TRACE. That helped to keep the latencies low, and it
did for 2.6.25.8-rt7 as well. As I see it, adding preemption points seem
to prevent high latencies.

This to me sounds like we have preempt_enable_noresched someplace that
shouldn't. In otherwords, we enabled preemption without checking if
preemption is needed, which is a serious bug in -rt.

Yep, in 2.6.25.8-rt7 trace_mark() is not used any more, maybe for that reason. Nevertheless, this "bug" kept the latency on my MPC5200 box low.
I will try with the old tracer to understand what the real cause of the high latencies is (with CONFIG_RCU_TRACE disabled).

Wolfgang.
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/