Re: [PATCH RFC tip/core/rcu 1/2] rcu: Defer reporting RCU-preempt quiescent states when disabled

[Joel Fernandes <joel@joelfernandes.org>]

On Wed, Jun 27, 2018 at 01:49:14PM -0700, Paul E. McKenney wrote:
> This commit defers reporting of RCU-preempt quiescent states at
> rcu_read_unlock_special() time when any of interrupts, softirq, or
> preemption are disabled.  These deferred quiescent states are reported
> at a later RCU_SOFTIRQ, context switch, idle entry, or CPU-hotplug
> offline operation.  Of course, if another RCU read-side critical
> section has started in the meantime, the reporting of the quiescent
> state will be further deferred.
> 
> This also means that disabling preemption, interrupts, and/or
> softirqs will act as an RCU-preempt read-side critical section.
> This is enforced by checking preempt_count() as needed.
> 
> Some special cases must be handled on an ad-hoc basis, for example,
> context switch is a quiescent state even though both the scheduler and
> do_exit() disable preemption.  In these cases, additional calls to
> rcu_preempt_deferred_qs() override the preemption disabling.  Similar
> logic overrides disabled interrupts in rcu_preempt_check_callbacks()
> because in this case the quiescent state happened just before the
> corresponding scheduling-clock interrupt.
> 
> This change lifts a long-standing restriction that required that if
> interrupts were disabled across a call to rcu_read_unlock() that the
> matching rcu_read_lock() also be contained within that interrupts-disabled
> region of code.  Because the reporting of the corresponding RCU-preempt
> quiescent state is now deferred until after interrupts have been enabled,
> it is no longer possible for this situation to result in deadlocks
> involving the scheduler's runqueue and priority-inheritance locks.
> This may allow some code simplification that might reduce interrupt
> latency a bit.  Unfortunately, this would also defer deboosting a
> low-priority task that had been subjected to RCU priority boosting,
> so real-time-response considerations might well force this restriction
> to remain in place.
> 
> Because RCU-preempt grace periods are now blocked not only by RCU
> read-side critical sections, but also by disabling of interrupts,
> preemption, and softirqs, it will be possible to eliminate RCU-bh and
> RCU-sched in favor of RCU-preempt in CONFIG_PREEMPT=y kernels.  This may
> require some additional plumbing to provide the network denial-of-service
> guarantees that have been traditionally provided by RCU-bh.  Once these
> are in place, CONFIG_PREEMPT=n kernels will be able to fold RCU-bh
> into RCU-sched.  This would mean that all kernels would have but
> one flavor of RCU, which would open the door to significant code
> cleanup.
> 
> Moving to a single flavor of RCU would also have the beneficial effect
> of reducing the NOCB kthreads by at least a factor of two.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
[...]
> diff --git a/kernel/rcu/tree_plugin.h b/kernel/rcu/tree_plugin.h
> index c1b17f5b9361..ff5c70eae47d 100644
> --- a/kernel/rcu/tree_plugin.h
> +++ b/kernel/rcu/tree_plugin.h
> @@ -371,6 +371,9 @@ static void rcu_preempt_note_context_switch(bool preempt)
>  		 * behalf of preempted instance of __rcu_read_unlock().
>  		 */
>  		rcu_read_unlock_special(t);
> +		rcu_preempt_deferred_qs(t);
> +	} else {
> +		rcu_preempt_deferred_qs(t);
>  	}
>  
>  	/*
> @@ -464,54 +467,51 @@ static bool rcu_preempt_has_tasks(struct rcu_node *rnp)
>  }
>  
>  /*
> - * Handle special cases during rcu_read_unlock(), such as needing to
> - * notify RCU core processing or task having blocked during the RCU
> - * read-side critical section.
> + * Report deferred quiescent states.  The deferral time can
> + * be quite short, for example, in the case of the call from
> + * rcu_read_unlock_special().
>   */
> -static void rcu_read_unlock_special(struct task_struct *t)
> +static void
> +rcu_preempt_deferred_qs_irqrestore(struct task_struct *t, unsigned long flags)
>  {
>  	bool empty_exp;
>  	bool empty_norm;
>  	bool empty_exp_now;
> -	unsigned long flags;
>  	struct list_head *np;
>  	bool drop_boost_mutex = false;
>  	struct rcu_data *rdp;
>  	struct rcu_node *rnp;
>  	union rcu_special special;
>  
> -	/* NMI handlers cannot block and cannot safely manipulate state. */
> -	if (in_nmi())
> -		return;
> -
> -	local_irq_save(flags);
> -
>  	/*
>  	 * If RCU core is waiting for this CPU to exit its critical section,
>  	 * report the fact that it has exited.  Because irqs are disabled,
>  	 * t->rcu_read_unlock_special cannot change.
>  	 */
>  	special = t->rcu_read_unlock_special;
> +	rdp = this_cpu_ptr(rcu_state_p->rda);
> +	if (!special.s && !rdp->deferred_qs) {
> +		local_irq_restore(flags);
> +		return;
> +	}
>  	if (special.b.need_qs) {
>  		rcu_preempt_qs();
>  		t->rcu_read_unlock_special.b.need_qs = false;
> -		if (!t->rcu_read_unlock_special.s) {
> +		if (!t->rcu_read_unlock_special.s && !rdp->deferred_qs) {
>  			local_irq_restore(flags);
>  			return;
>  		}
>  	}
>  
>  	/*
> -	 * Respond to a request for an expedited grace period, but only if
> -	 * we were not preempted, meaning that we were running on the same
> -	 * CPU throughout.  If we were preempted, the exp_need_qs flag
> -	 * would have been cleared at the time of the first preemption,
> -	 * and the quiescent state would be reported when we were dequeued.
> +	 * Respond to a request by an expedited grace period for a
> +	 * quiescent state from this CPU.  Note that requests from
> +	 * tasks are handled when removing the task from the
> +	 * blocked-tasks list below.
>  	 */
> -	if (special.b.exp_need_qs) {
> -		WARN_ON_ONCE(special.b.blocked);
> +	if (special.b.exp_need_qs || rdp->deferred_qs) {
>  		t->rcu_read_unlock_special.b.exp_need_qs = false;
> -		rdp = this_cpu_ptr(rcu_state_p->rda);
> +		rdp->deferred_qs = false;
>  		rcu_report_exp_rdp(rcu_state_p, rdp, true);
>  		if (!t->rcu_read_unlock_special.s) {
>  			local_irq_restore(flags);
> @@ -519,19 +519,6 @@ static void rcu_read_unlock_special(struct task_struct *t)
>  		}
>  	}
>  
> -	/* Hardware IRQ handlers cannot block, complain if they get here. */
> -	if (in_irq() || in_serving_softirq()) {
> -		lockdep_rcu_suspicious(__FILE__, __LINE__,
> -				       "rcu_read_unlock() from irq or softirq with blocking in critical section!!!\n");
> -		pr_alert("->rcu_read_unlock_special: %#x (b: %d, enq: %d nq: %d)\n",
> -			 t->rcu_read_unlock_special.s,
> -			 t->rcu_read_unlock_special.b.blocked,
> -			 t->rcu_read_unlock_special.b.exp_need_qs,
> -			 t->rcu_read_unlock_special.b.need_qs);
> -		local_irq_restore(flags);
> -		return;
> -	}
> -
>  	/* Clean up if blocked during RCU read-side critical section. */
>  	if (special.b.blocked) {
>  		t->rcu_read_unlock_special.b.blocked = false;
> @@ -602,6 +589,66 @@ static void rcu_read_unlock_special(struct task_struct *t)
>  	}
>  }
>  
> +/*
> + * Is a deferred quiescent-state pending, and are we also not in
> + * an RCU read-side critical section?  It is the caller's responsibility
> + * to ensure it is otherwise safe to report any deferred quiescent
> + * states.  The reason for this is that it is safe to report a
> + * quiescent state during context switch even though preemption
> + * is disabled.  This function cannot be expected to understand these
> + * nuances, so the caller must handle them.
> + */
> +static bool rcu_preempt_need_deferred_qs(struct task_struct *t)
> +{
> +	return (this_cpu_ptr(&rcu_preempt_data)->deferred_qs ||
> +		READ_ONCE(t->rcu_read_unlock_special.s)) &&
> +	       !t->rcu_read_lock_nesting;
> +}
> +
> +/*
> + * Report a deferred quiescent state if needed and safe to do so.
> + * As with rcu_preempt_need_deferred_qs(), "safe" involves only
> + * not being in an RCU read-side critical section.  The caller must
> + * evaluate safety in terms of interrupt, softirq, and preemption
> + * disabling.
> + */
> +static void rcu_preempt_deferred_qs(struct task_struct *t)
> +{
> +	unsigned long flags;
> +
> +	if (!rcu_preempt_need_deferred_qs(t))
> +		return;
> +	local_irq_save(flags);
> +	rcu_preempt_deferred_qs_irqrestore(t, flags);
> +}
> +
> +/*
> + * Handle special cases during rcu_read_unlock(), such as needing to
> + * notify RCU core processing or task having blocked during the RCU
> + * read-side critical section.
> + */
> +static void rcu_read_unlock_special(struct task_struct *t)
> +{
> +	unsigned long flags;
> +	bool preempt_bh_were_disabled = !!(preempt_count() & ~HARDIRQ_MASK);

Would it be better to just test for those bits just to be safe the higher
order bits don't bleed in, such as PREEMPT_NEED_RESCHED, something like the
following based on the 'dev' branch?

thanks,

- Joel

---8<-----------------------

diff --git a/kernel/rcu/tree_plugin.h b/kernel/rcu/tree_plugin.h
index dfeca11c9fe7..ca7cfdf422f1 100644
--- a/kernel/rcu/tree_plugin.h
+++ b/kernel/rcu/tree_plugin.h
@@ -626,7 +626,8 @@ static void rcu_preempt_deferred_qs(struct task_struct *t)
 static void rcu_read_unlock_special(struct task_struct *t)
 {
 	unsigned long flags;
-	bool preempt_bh_were_disabled = !!(preempt_count() & ~HARDIRQ_MASK);
+	bool preempt_bh_were_disabled = !!(preempt_count() &
+					   (PREEMPT_MASK | SOFTIRQ_MASK));
 	bool irqs_were_disabled;
 
 	/* NMI handlers cannot block and cannot safely manipulate state. */