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* [Query] Preemption (hogging) of the work handler
@ 2016-07-01 16:59 Viresh Kumar
  2016-07-01 17:22 ` Tejun Heo
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 56+ messages in thread
From: Viresh Kumar @ 2016-07-01 16:59 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Tejun Heo
  Cc: Greg Kroah-Hartman, Linux Kernel Mailing List, vlevenetz,
	vaibhav.hiremath, alex.elder, johan

Hi Tejun,

we are stuck with a typical issue on our octa-core ARM platform and
wanted to make sure that we aren't abusing the workqueue API by using
it for the wrong usecase.

Setup:

The system watchdog uses a delayed-work (1 second) for petting the
watchdog (resetting its counter) and if the work doesn't reset the
counters in time (another 1 second), the watchdog resets the system.

Petting-time: 1 second
Watchdog Reset-time: 2 seconds

The wq is allocated with:
        wdog_wq = alloc_workqueue("wdog", WQ_HIGHPRI, 0);

The watchdog's work-handler looks like this:

static void pet_watchdog_work(struct work_struct *work)
{

        ...

        pet_watchdog(); //Reset its counters

        /* CONFIG_HZ=300, queuing for 1 second */
        queue_delayed_work(wdog_wq, &wdog_dwork, 300);
}

kernel: 3.10 (Yeah, you can rant me for that, but its not something I
can decide on :)

Symptoms:

- The watchdog reboots the system sometimes. It is more reproducible
  in cases where an (out-of-tree) bus enumerated over USB is suddenly
  disconnected, which leads to removal of lots of kernel devices on
  that bus and a lot of print messages as well, due to failures for
  sending any more data for those devices..

Observations:

I tried to get more into it and found this..

- The timer used by the delayed work fires at the time it was
  programmed for (checked timer->expires with value of jiffies) and
  the work-handler gets a chance to run and reset the counters pretty
  quickly after that.

- But somehow, the timer isn't programmed for the right time.

- Something is happening between the time the work-handler starts
  running and we read jiffies from the add_timer() function which gets
  called from within the queue_delayed_work().

- For example, if the value of jiffies in the pet_watchdog_work()
  handler (before calling queue_delayed_work()) is say 1000000, then
  the value of jiffies after the call to queue_delayed_work() has
  returned becomes 1000310. i.e. it sometimes increases by a value of
  over 300, which is 1 second in our setup. I have seen this delta to
  vary from 50 to 350. If it crosses 300, the watchdog resets the
  system (as it was programmed for 2 seconds).


So, we aren't able to queue the next timer in time and that causes all
these problems. I haven't concluded on why is that so..

Questions:

- I hope that the wq handler can be preempted, but can it be this bad?
- Is it fine to use the wq-handler for petting the watchdog? Or should
  that only be done with help of interrupt-handlers?
- Any other clues you can give which can help us figure out what's
  going on?

Thanks in advance and sorry to bother you :)

-- 
viresh

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 56+ messages in thread

end of thread, other threads:[~2016-07-30  2:12 UTC | newest]

Thread overview: 56+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed)
-- links below jump to the message on this page --
2016-07-01 16:59 [Query] Preemption (hogging) of the work handler Viresh Kumar
2016-07-01 17:22 ` Tejun Heo
2016-07-01 17:28   ` Viresh Kumar
2016-07-06 18:28   ` Viresh Kumar
2016-07-06 19:23     ` Steven Rostedt
2016-07-06 19:25       ` Viresh Kumar
2016-07-11 10:26     ` Jan Kara
2016-07-11 15:44       ` Sergey Senozhatsky
2016-07-11 22:35         ` Viresh Kumar
2016-07-11 22:44           ` Rafael J. Wysocki
2016-07-11 22:46             ` Viresh Kumar
2016-07-12 12:24               ` Rafael J. Wysocki
2016-07-12 13:02                 ` Viresh Kumar
2016-07-12 13:56                   ` Petr Mladek
2016-07-12 14:04                     ` Viresh Kumar
2016-07-12  9:38           ` Sergey Senozhatsky
2016-07-12 12:52             ` Petr Mladek
2016-07-12 13:12               ` Viresh Kumar
2016-07-12 17:11                 ` Viresh Kumar
2016-07-12 19:59                   ` Rafael J. Wysocki
2016-07-12 20:08                     ` Viresh Kumar
2016-07-13  7:00                   ` Sergey Senozhatsky
2016-07-13 12:05                     ` Rafael J. Wysocki
2016-07-13 12:57                       ` Sergey Senozhatsky
2016-07-13 13:22                         ` Rafael J. Wysocki
2016-07-12 14:03               ` Sergey Senozhatsky
2016-07-12 14:12                 ` Viresh Kumar
2016-07-14 23:52                 ` Viresh Kumar
2016-07-15 13:11                   ` Sergey Senozhatsky
2016-07-15 15:57                     ` Viresh Kumar
2016-07-12 23:19           ` Viresh Kumar
2016-07-13  0:18             ` Viresh Kumar
2016-07-13  5:45             ` Sergey Senozhatsky
2016-07-13 15:39               ` Viresh Kumar
2016-07-13 23:08                 ` Rafael J. Wysocki
2016-07-13 23:18                   ` Viresh Kumar
2016-07-13 23:38                     ` Greg Kroah-Hartman
2016-07-14  0:55                 ` Sergey Senozhatsky
2016-07-14  1:09                   ` Rafael J. Wysocki
2016-07-14  1:32                     ` Sergey Senozhatsky
2016-07-14 21:57                       ` Viresh Kumar
2016-07-14 21:55                   ` Viresh Kumar
2016-07-14 14:12               ` Jan Kara
2016-07-14 14:33                 ` Rafael J. Wysocki
2016-07-14 14:39                   ` Jan Kara
2016-07-14 14:47                     ` Rafael J. Wysocki
2016-07-14 14:55                       ` Jan Kara
2016-07-14 22:14                         ` Viresh Kumar
2016-07-14 14:34                 ` Sergey Senozhatsky
2016-07-14 15:03                   ` Jan Kara
2016-07-14 22:12                 ` Viresh Kumar
2016-07-18 11:01                   ` Jan Kara
2016-07-18 11:49                     ` Rafael J. Wysocki
2016-07-29 20:42               ` Viresh Kumar
2016-07-30  2:12                 ` Sergey Senozhatsky
2016-07-11 19:03       ` Viresh Kumar

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