Re: [PATCH 2/3] work_on_cpu: Use our own workqueue.

From: Oleg Nesterov
Date: Mon Jan 26 2009 - 16:53:36 EST


On 01/26, Andrew Morton wrote:
>
> On Mon, 26 Jan 2009 22:27:27 +0100
> Ingo Molnar <mingo@xxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> >
> > * Andrew Morton <akpm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> > > > So if it's generic it ought to be implemented in a generic way - not a
> > > > "dont use from any codepath that has a lock held that might
> > > > occasionally also be held in a keventd worklet". (which is a totally
> > > > unmaintainable proposition and which would just cause repeat bugs
> > > > again and again.)
> > >
> > > That's different. The core fault here lies in the keventd workqueue
> > > handling code. If we're flushing work A then we shouldn't go and block
> > > behind unrelated work B.
> >
> > the blocking is inherent in the concept of "a queue of worklets handled by
> > a single thread".
> >
> > If a worklet is blocked then all other work performed by that thread is
> > blocked as well. So by waiting on a piece of work in the queue, we wait
> > for all prior work queued up there as well.
> >
> > The only way to decouple that and to make them independent (and hence
> > independently flushable) is to create more parallel flows of execution:
> > i.e. by creating another thread (another workqueue).
> >
>
> Nope. As I said, the caller of flush_work() can detach the work item
> and run it directly.

I am totally confused, just can't understand this thread...

I guess, we can't detach and execute because we can run on the
different CPU.

But "[PATCH 1/3] work_on_cpu: dont try to get_online_cpus() in work_on_cpu."
removes get_online_cpus/put_online_cpus, this means the work can run on
the wrong CPU anyway. Or work_on_cpu() can hang forever if CPU has already
gone away before queue_work_on().

Confused.

Oleg.

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