Re: [PATCH 3/3] mm/mmu_gather: send tlb_remove_table_smp_sync IPI only to CPUs in kernel mode

[Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>]

On Wed, Apr 05, 2023 at 01:10:07PM +0200, Frederic Weisbecker wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 05, 2023 at 12:44:04PM +0200, Frederic Weisbecker wrote:
> > On Tue, Apr 04, 2023 at 04:42:24PM +0300, Yair Podemsky wrote:
> > > +	int state = atomic_read(&ct->state);
> > > +	/* will return true only for cpus in kernel space */
> > > +	return state & CT_STATE_MASK == CONTEXT_KERNEL;
> > > +}
> > 
> > Also note that this doesn't stricly prevent userspace from being interrupted.
> > You may well observe the CPU in kernel but it may receive the IPI later after
> > switching to userspace.
> > 
> > We could arrange for avoiding that with marking ct->state with a pending work bit
> > to flush upon user entry/exit but that's a bit more overhead so I first need to
> > know about your expectations here, ie: can you tolerate such an occasional
> > interruption or not?
> 
> Bah, actually what can we do to prevent from that racy IPI? Not much I fear...

Yeah, so I don't think that's actually a problem. The premise is that
*IFF* NOHZ_FULL stays in userspace, then it will never observe the IPI.

If it violates this by doing syscalls or other kernel entries; it gets
to keep the pieces.