Re: RCU latency regression in 2.6.16-rc1

[Lee Revell <rlrevell@joe-job.com>]

On Sun, 2006-01-29 at 01:04 +0530, Dipankar Sarma wrote:
> On Sat, Jan 28, 2006 at 01:51:23PM -0500, Lee Revell wrote:
> > On Sat, 2006-01-28 at 13:00 -0500, Lee Revell wrote:
> > > OK, now we are making progress.
> > 
> > I spoke too soon, it's not fixed:
> > 
> > preemption latency trace v1.1.5 on 2.6.16-rc1
> > --------------------------------------------------------------------
> >  latency: 4183 us, #3676/3676, CPU#0 | (M:rt VP:0, KP:0, SP:0 HP:0)
> >     -----------------
> > evolutio-2877  0d.s.   97us : local_bh_enable (rt_run_flush)
> > evolutio-2877  0d.s.   98us : local_bh_enable (rt_run_flush)
> > evolutio-2877  0d.s.   99us : local_bh_enable (rt_run_flush)
> > evolutio-2877  0d.s.  100us : local_bh_enable (rt_run_flush)
> > evolutio-2877  0d.s.  101us : local_bh_enable (rt_run_flush)
> > 
> > [ etc ]
> >  
> > evolutio-2877  0d.s. 4079us : local_bh_enable (rt_run_flush)
> > evolutio-2877  0d.s. 4080us : local_bh_enable (rt_run_flush)
> 
> I am not sure if I am interpreting the latency trace right,
> but it seems that there is a difference between the problem
> you were seeing earlier and now.
> 
> In one of your earlier traces, I saw  -
> 
>   <idle>-0     0d.s.  182us : dst_destroy (dst_rcu_free)
>   <idle>-0     0d.s.  183us : ipv4_dst_destroy (dst_destroy)
> 
> [ etc - zillions of dst_rcu_free()s deleted ]
> 
>   <idle>-0     0d.s. 13403us : dst_rcu_free (__rcu_process_callbacks)
>   <idle>-0     0d.s. 13403us : dst_destroy (dst_rcu_free)
> 
> This points to latency increase caused by lots and lots of
> RCU callbacks doing dst_rcu_free(). Do you still see those ?
> 
> Your new trace shows that we are held up in in rt_run_flush(). 
> I guess we need to investigate why we spend so much time in rt_run_flush(),
> because of a big route table or the lock acquisitions.

Yes, you are right, they are 2 different problems.  Paul suggested that
this patch might help with the rt_run_flush() problem.

It will take a while to determine whether it fixes the dst_rcu_free()
problem as I was never able to reproduce it on demand.

Lee