Re: [PATCH] xen: sched: avoid races on time values read from NOW()

[Wei Liu <wei.liu2@citrix.com>]

On Thu, May 19, 2016 at 10:11:35AM +0200, Dario Faggioli wrote:
> or (even in cases where there is no race, e.g., outside
> of Credit2) avoid using a time sample which may be rather
> old, and hence stale.
> 
> In fact, we should only sample NOW() from _inside_
> the critical region within which the value we read is
> used. If we don't, in case we have to spin for a while
> before entering the region, when actually using it:
> 
>  1) we will use something that, at the veryy least, is
>     not really "now", because of the spinning,
> 
>  2) if someone else sampled NOW() during a critical
>     region protected by the lock we are spinning on,
>     and if we compare the two samples when we get
>     inside our region, our one will be 'earlier',
>     even if we actually arrived later, which is a
>     race.
> 
> In Credit2, we see an instance of 2), in runq_tickle(),
> when it is called by csched2_context_saved() as it samples
> NOW() before acquiring the runq lock. This makes things
> look like the time went backwards, and it confuses the
> algorithm (there's even a d2printk() about it, which would
> trigger all the time, if enabled).
> 
> In RTDS, something similar happens in repl_timer_handler(),
> and there's another instance in schedule() (in generic code),
> so fix these cases too.
> 
> While there, improve csched2_vcpu_wake() and and rt_vcpu_wake()
> a little as well (removing a pointless initialization, and
> moving the sampling a bit closer to its use). These two hunks
> entail no further functional changes.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Dario Faggioli <dario.faggioli@citrix.com>
> ---
> Cc: George Dunlap <george.dunlap@citrix.com>
> Cc: Meng Xu <mengxu@cis.upenn.edu>
> Cc: Wei Liu <wei.liu@citrix.com>


Subject to review from Meng and George:

Release-acked-by: Wei Liu <wei.liu2@citrix.com>

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