Re: [PATCH 1/1] Fix: trace sched switch start/stop racy updates

[Joel Fernandes]

On Fri, Aug 16, 2019 at 3:19 PM Alan Stern <stern@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> On Fri, 16 Aug 2019, Mathieu Desnoyers wrote:
>
> > If you choose not to use READ_ONCE(), then the "load tearing" issue can
> > cause similar spurious 1 -> 0 -> 1 transitions near 16-bit counter
> > overflow as described above. The "Invented load" also becomes an issue,
> > because the compiler could use the loaded value for a branch, and re-load
> > that value between two branches which are expected to use the same value,
> > effectively generating a corrupted state.
> >
> > I think we need a statement about whether READ_ONCE/WRITE_ONCE should
> > be used in this kind of situation, or if we are fine dealing with the
> > awkward compiler side-effects when they will occur.
>
> The only real downside (apart from readability) of READ_ONCE and
> WRITE_ONCE is that they prevent the compiler from optimizing accesses
> to the location being read or written.  But if you're just doing a
> single access in each place, not multiple accesses, then there's
> nothing to optimize anyway.  So there's no real reason not to use
> READ_ONCE or WRITE_ONCE.

I am also more on the side of using *_ONCE. To me, by principal, I
would be willing to convert any concurrent plain access using _ONCE,
just so we don't have to worry about it now or in the future and also
documents the access.

Perhaps the commit message can be reworded to mention that the _ONCE
is an additional clean up for safe access.

thanks,

 - Joel