Re: [PATCH v5 06/45] percpu_rwlock: Allow writers to be readers, andadd lockdep annotations

From: Paul E. McKenney
Date: Fri Feb 08 2013 - 18:48:26 EST


On Tue, Jan 22, 2013 at 01:04:23PM +0530, Srivatsa S. Bhat wrote:
> CPU hotplug (which will be the first user of per-CPU rwlocks) has a special
> requirement with respect to locking: the writer, after acquiring the per-CPU
> rwlock for write, must be allowed to take the same lock for read, without
> deadlocking and without getting complaints from lockdep. In comparison, this
> is similar to what get_online_cpus()/put_online_cpus() does today: it allows
> a hotplug writer (who holds the cpu_hotplug.lock mutex) to invoke it without
> locking issues, because it silently returns if the caller is the hotplug
> writer itself.
>
> This can be easily achieved with per-CPU rwlocks as well (even without a
> "is this a writer?" check) by incrementing the per-CPU refcount of the writer
> immediately after taking the global rwlock for write, and then decrementing
> the per-CPU refcount before releasing the global rwlock.
> This ensures that any reader that comes along on that CPU while the writer is
> active (on that same CPU), notices the non-zero value of the nested counter
> and assumes that it is a nested read-side critical section and proceeds by
> just incrementing the refcount. Thus we prevent the reader from taking the
> global rwlock for read, which prevents the writer from deadlocking itself.
>
> Add that support and teach lockdep about this special locking scheme so
> that it knows that this sort of usage is valid. Also add the required lockdep
> annotations to enable it to detect common locking problems with per-CPU
> rwlocks.

Very nice! The write-side interrupt disabling ensures that the task
stays on CPU, as required.

One request: Could we please have a comment explaining the reasons for
the writer incrementing and decrementing the reader reference count?

It looked really really strange to me until I came back and read the
commit log. ;-)

Thanx, Paul

> Cc: David Howells <dhowells@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Signed-off-by: Srivatsa S. Bhat <srivatsa.bhat@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> ---
>
> lib/percpu-rwlock.c | 21 +++++++++++++++++++++
> 1 file changed, 21 insertions(+)
>
> diff --git a/lib/percpu-rwlock.c b/lib/percpu-rwlock.c
> index a8d177a..054a50a 100644
> --- a/lib/percpu-rwlock.c
> +++ b/lib/percpu-rwlock.c
> @@ -84,6 +84,10 @@ void percpu_read_lock_irqsafe(struct percpu_rwlock *pcpu_rwlock)
>
> if (likely(!writer_active(pcpu_rwlock))) {
> this_cpu_inc(*pcpu_rwlock->reader_refcnt);
> +
> + /* Pretend that we take global_rwlock for lockdep */
> + rwlock_acquire_read(&pcpu_rwlock->global_rwlock.dep_map,
> + 0, 0, _RET_IP_);
> } else {
> /* Writer is active, so switch to global rwlock. */
>
> @@ -108,6 +112,12 @@ void percpu_read_lock_irqsafe(struct percpu_rwlock *pcpu_rwlock)
> if (!writer_active(pcpu_rwlock)) {
> this_cpu_inc(*pcpu_rwlock->reader_refcnt);
> read_unlock(&pcpu_rwlock->global_rwlock);
> +
> + /*
> + * Pretend that we take global_rwlock for lockdep
> + */
> + rwlock_acquire_read(&pcpu_rwlock->global_rwlock.dep_map,
> + 0, 0, _RET_IP_);
> }
> }
> }
> @@ -128,6 +138,14 @@ void percpu_read_unlock_irqsafe(struct percpu_rwlock *pcpu_rwlock)
> if (reader_nested_percpu(pcpu_rwlock)) {
> this_cpu_dec(*pcpu_rwlock->reader_refcnt);
> smp_wmb(); /* Paired with smp_rmb() in sync_reader() */
> +
> + /*
> + * If this is the last decrement, then it is time to pretend
> + * to lockdep that we are releasing the read lock.
> + */
> + if (!reader_nested_percpu(pcpu_rwlock))
> + rwlock_release(&pcpu_rwlock->global_rwlock.dep_map,
> + 1, _RET_IP_);
> } else {
> read_unlock(&pcpu_rwlock->global_rwlock);
> }
> @@ -205,11 +223,14 @@ void percpu_write_lock_irqsave(struct percpu_rwlock *pcpu_rwlock,
> announce_writer_active(pcpu_rwlock);
> sync_all_readers(pcpu_rwlock);
> write_lock_irqsave(&pcpu_rwlock->global_rwlock, *flags);
> + this_cpu_inc(*pcpu_rwlock->reader_refcnt);
> }
>
> void percpu_write_unlock_irqrestore(struct percpu_rwlock *pcpu_rwlock,
> unsigned long *flags)
> {
> + this_cpu_dec(*pcpu_rwlock->reader_refcnt);
> +
> /*
> * Inform all readers that we are done, so that they can switch back
> * to their per-cpu refcounts. (We don't need to wait for them to
>

--
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/