Re: [PATCH v3] virtio_balloon: Convert "vballoon" kthread into a workqueue

["Michael S. Tsirkin" <mst@redhat.com>]

On Thu, Nov 20, 2014 at 11:29:35AM -0500, Tejun Heo wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 20, 2014 at 06:26:24PM +0200, Michael S. Tsirkin wrote:
> > On Thu, Nov 20, 2014 at 06:25:43PM +0200, Michael S. Tsirkin wrote:
> > > On Thu, Nov 20, 2014 at 11:07:46AM -0500, Tejun Heo wrote:
> > > > On Thu, Nov 20, 2014 at 05:03:17PM +0100, Petr Mladek wrote:
> > > > ...
> > > > > @@ -476,7 +460,6 @@ static void virtballoon_remove(struct virtio_device *vdev)
> > > > >  {
> > > > >  	struct virtio_balloon *vb = vdev->priv;
> > > > >  
> > > > > -	kthread_stop(vb->thread);
> > > > >  	remove_common(vb);
> > > > >  	kfree(vb);
> > > > >  }
> > > > 
> > > > Shouldn't the work item be flushed before removal is complete?
> > > 
> > > In fact, flushing it won't help because it can requeue itself, right?
> 
> There's cancel_work_sync() to stop the self-requeueing ones.

What happens if queue_work runs while cancel_work_sync is in progress?
Does it fail to queue?

> > From that POV a dedicated WQ kept it simple.
> 
> A dedicated wq doesn't do anything for that.  You can't shut down a
> workqueue with a pending work item on it.  destroy_workqueue() will
> try to drain the target wq, warn if it doesn't finish in certain
> number of iterations and just keep trying indefinitely.
> 
> Thanks.

Right, so eventually we'll stop requeueuing and it will succeed?

> -- 
> tejun