Re: [RFC] vmstat: Avoid waking up idle-cpu to service shepherd work

From: viresh kumar
Date: Sat Mar 28 2015 - 07:57:38 EST


On 28 March 2015 at 15:23, Peter Zijlstra <peterz@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Well, for one your patch is indeed disgusting.

Yeah, I agree :)

> But yes I'm aware Thomas
> wants to rewrite the timer thing. But Thomas is away for a little while
> and if this really needs to happen then it does.

Sometime back I was trying to use another bit from base pointer for
marking a timer as PINNED:

diff --git a/include/linux/timer.h b/include/linux/timer.h
index 8c5a197e1587..e7184f57449c 100644
--- a/include/linux/timer.h
+++ b/include/linux/timer.h
@@ -67,8 +67,9 @@ extern struct tvec_base boot_tvec_bases;
*/
#define TIMER_DEFERRABLE 0x1LU
#define TIMER_IRQSAFE 0x2LU
+#define TIMER_PINNED 0x4LU
-#define TIMER_FLAG_MASK 0x3LU
+#define TIMER_FLAG_MASK 0x7LU


And Fenguang's build-bot showed the problem (only) on blackfin [1].

config: make ARCH=blackfin allyesconfig

All error/warnings:

kernel/timer.c: In function 'init_timers':
>> kernel/timer.c:1683:2: error: call to '__compiletime_assert_1683'
>> declared with attribute error: BUILD_BUG_ON failed:
>> __alignof__(struct tvec_base) & TIMER_FLAG_MASK


So probably we need to make 'base' aligned to 8 bytes ?



So, what you are suggesting is something like this (untested):

diff --git a/include/linux/timer.h b/include/linux/timer.h
index 8c5a197e1587..68bf09d69352 100644
--- a/include/linux/timer.h
+++ b/include/linux/timer.h
@@ -67,8 +67,9 @@ extern struct tvec_base boot_tvec_bases;
*/
#define TIMER_DEFERRABLE 0x1LU
#define TIMER_IRQSAFE 0x2LU
+#define TIMER_RUNNING 0x4LU

-#define TIMER_FLAG_MASK 0x3LU
+#define TIMER_FLAG_MASK 0x7LU

#define __TIMER_INITIALIZER(_function, _expires, _data, _flags) { \
.entry = { .prev = TIMER_ENTRY_STATIC }, \
diff --git a/kernel/time/timer.c b/kernel/time/timer.c
index 2d3f5c504939..8f9efa64bd34 100644
--- a/kernel/time/timer.c
+++ b/kernel/time/timer.c
@@ -105,6 +105,21 @@ static inline unsigned int tbase_get_irqsafe(struct tvec_base *base)
return ((unsigned int)(unsigned long)base & TIMER_IRQSAFE);
}

+static inline unsigned int tbase_get_running(struct tvec_base *base)
+{
+ return ((unsigned int)(unsigned long)base & TIMER_RUNNING);
+}
+
+static inline unsigned int tbase_set_running(struct tvec_base *base)
+{
+ return ((unsigned int)(unsigned long)base | TIMER_RUNNING);
+}
+
+static inline unsigned int tbase_clear_running(struct tvec_base *base)
+{
+ return ((unsigned int)(unsigned long)base & ~TIMER_RUNNING);
+}
+
static inline struct tvec_base *tbase_get_base(struct tvec_base *base)
{
return ((struct tvec_base *)((unsigned long)base & ~TIMER_FLAG_MASK));
@@ -781,21 +796,12 @@ __mod_timer(struct timer_list *timer, unsigned long expires,
new_base = per_cpu(tvec_bases, cpu);

if (base != new_base) {
- /*
- * We are trying to schedule the timer on the local CPU.
- * However we can't change timer's base while it is running,
- * otherwise del_timer_sync() can't detect that the timer's
- * handler yet has not finished. This also guarantees that
- * the timer is serialized wrt itself.
- */
- if (likely(base->running_timer != timer)) {
- /* See the comment in lock_timer_base() */
- timer_set_base(timer, NULL);
- spin_unlock(&base->lock);
- base = new_base;
- spin_lock(&base->lock);
- timer_set_base(timer, base);
- }
+ /* See the comment in lock_timer_base() */
+ timer_set_base(timer, NULL);
+ spin_unlock(&base->lock);
+ base = new_base;
+ spin_lock(&base->lock);
+ timer_set_base(timer, base);
}

timer->expires = expires;
@@ -1016,7 +1022,7 @@ int try_to_del_timer_sync(struct timer_list *timer)

base = lock_timer_base(timer, &flags);

- if (base->running_timer != timer) {
+ if (tbase_get_running(timer->base)) {
timer_stats_timer_clear_start_info(timer);
ret = detach_if_pending(timer, base, true);
}
@@ -1202,6 +1208,7 @@ static inline void __run_timers(struct tvec_base *base)
timer_stats_account_timer(timer);

base->running_timer = timer;
+ tbase_set_running(timer->base);
detach_expired_timer(timer, base);

if (irqsafe) {
@@ -1216,6 +1223,7 @@ static inline void __run_timers(struct tvec_base *base)
}
}
base->running_timer = NULL;
+ tbase_clear_running(timer->base);
spin_unlock_irq(&base->lock);
}

------------x--------------------x----------------------

Right?


Now there are few issues I see here (Sorry if they are all imaginary):
- In case a timer re-arms itself from its handler and is migrated from CPU A to B, what
happens if the re-armed timer fires before the first handler finishes ? i.e. timer->fn()
hasn't finished running on CPU A and it has fired again on CPU B. Wouldn't this expose
us to a lot of other problems? It wouldn't be serialized to itself anymore ?

- Because the timer has migrated to another CPU, the locking in __run_timers()
needs to be fixed. And that will make it complicated ..

- __run_timer() doesn't lock bases of other CPUs, and it has to do it now..
- We probably need to take locks of both local CPU and the one to which timer migrated.

- Its possible now that there can be more than one running timer for a base, which wasn't
true earlier. Not sure if it will break something.


Thanks for your continuous support to reply to my (sometimes stupid) queries.

--
viresh

[1] https://lists.01.org/pipermail/kbuild-all/2014-April/003982.html
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