Re: [PATCH tip/core/rcu 03/17] rcu/tree: Skip entry into the page allocator for PREEMPT_RT

[Uladzislau Rezki <urezki@gmail.com>]

On Thu, Jul 02, 2020 at 04:12:16PM +0200, Sebastian Andrzej Siewior wrote:
> On 2020-06-30 11:35:34 [-0700], Paul E. McKenney wrote:
> > > This is not going to work together with the "wait context validator"
> > > (CONFIG_PROVE_RAW_LOCK_NESTING). As of -rc3 it should complain about
> > > printk() which is why it is still disabled by default.
> > 
> > Fixing that should be "interesting".  In particular, RCU CPU stall
> > warnings rely on the raw spin lock to reduce false positives due
> > to race conditions.  Some thought will be required here.
> 
> I don't get this part. Can you explain/give me an example where to look
> at?
> 
> > > So assume that this is fixed and enabled then on !PREEMPT_RT it will
> > > complain that you have a raw_spinlock_t acquired (the one from patch
> > > 02/17) and attempt to acquire a spinlock_t in the memory allocator.
> > 
> > Given that the slab allocator doesn't acquire any locks until it gets
> > a fair way in, wouldn't it make sense to allow a "shallow" allocation
> > while a raw spinlock is held?  This would require yet another GFP_ flag,
> > but that won't make all that much of a difference in the total.  ;-)
> 
> That would be one way of dealing with. But we could go back to
> spinlock_t and keep the memory allocation even for RT as is. I don't see
> a downside of this. And we would worry about kfree_rcu() from real
> IRQ-off region once we get to it.
> 
Another way of fixing it is just dropping the lock letting the page
allocator to do an allocation without our "upper/local" lock. I did a
proposal like that once upon a time, so maybe it is a time to highlight
it again:

<snip>
diff --git a/kernel/rcu/tree.c b/kernel/rcu/tree.c
index 21c2fa5bd8c3..249f10a89bb9 100644
--- a/kernel/rcu/tree.c
+++ b/kernel/rcu/tree.c
@@ -3278,9 +3278,11 @@ static void kfree_rcu_monitor(struct work_struct *work)
 }

 static inline bool
-kvfree_call_rcu_add_ptr_to_bulk(struct kfree_rcu_cpu *krcp, void *ptr)
+kvfree_call_rcu_add_ptr_to_bulk(struct kfree_rcu_cpu *krcp,
+       void *ptr, unsigned long *flags)
 {
        struct kvfree_rcu_bulk_data *bnode;
+       struct kfree_rcu_cpu *tmp;
        int idx;

        if (unlikely(!krcp->initialized))
@@ -3306,6 +3308,9 @@ kvfree_call_rcu_add_ptr_to_bulk(struct kfree_rcu_cpu *krcp, void *ptr)
                        if (IS_ENABLED(CONFIG_PREEMPT_RT))
                                return false;

+                       migrate_disable();
+                       krc_this_cpu_unlock(krcp, *flags);
+
                        /*
                         * NOTE: For one argument of kvfree_rcu() we can
                         * drop the lock and get the page in sleepable
@@ -3315,6 +3320,12 @@ kvfree_call_rcu_add_ptr_to_bulk(struct kfree_rcu_cpu *krcp, void *ptr)
                         */
                        bnode = (struct kvfree_rcu_bulk_data *)
                                __get_free_page(GFP_NOWAIT | __GFP_NOWARN);
+
+                       tmp = krc_this_cpu_lock(flags);
+                       migrate_enable();
+
+                       /* Sanity check, just in case. */
+                       WARN_ON(tmp != krcp);
                }
 
                /* Switch to emergency path. */
@@ -3386,7 +3397,7 @@ void kvfree_call_rcu(struct rcu_head *head, rcu_callback_t func)
         * Under high memory pressure GFP_NOWAIT can fail,
         * in that case the emergency path is maintained.
         */
-       success = kvfree_call_rcu_add_ptr_to_bulk(krcp, ptr);
+       success = kvfree_call_rcu_add_ptr_to_bulk(krcp, ptr, &flags);
        if (!success) {
                if (head == NULL)
                        // Inline if kvfree_rcu(one_arg) call.
<snip>

--
Vlad Rezki