Re: [RFC PATCH] futex: Remove requirement for lock_page inget_futex_key

[Thomas Gleixner]

On Tue, 29 Oct 2013, Mel Gorman wrote:

> Thomas Gleixner and Peter Zijlstra discussed off-list that real-time users
> currently have a problem with the page lock being contended for unbounded
> periods of time during futex operations. The three of us discussed the
> possibiltity that the page lock is unnecessary in this case because we are
> not concerned with the usual races with reclaim and page cache updates. For
> anonymous pages, the associated futex object is the mm_struct which does
> not require the page lock. For inodes, we should be able to check under
> RCU read lock if the page mapping is still valid to take a reference to
> the inode.  This just leaves one rare race that requires the page lock
> in the slow path. This patch does not completely eliminate the page lock
> but it should reduce contention in the majority of cases.
> 
> Patch boots and futextest did not explode but I did no comparison
> performance tests. Thomas, do you have details of the workload that
> drove you to examine this problem? Alternatively, can you test it and

The scenario is simple. All you need is a PSHARED futex.

Task A 
     get_futex_key()
     lock_page()

---> preemption

Now any other task trying to lock that page will have to wait until
task A gets scheduled back in, which is an unbound time.

It takes quite some time to reproduce, but I'll ask the people who
have that workload to give it a try.

Thanks,

	tglx
--
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/