Re: [PATCH v2] 9p/client: don't assume signal_pending() clears on recalc_sigpending()

[Dominique Martinet <asmadeus@codewreck.org>]

Jens Axboe wrote on Mon, Feb 06, 2023 at 01:19:24PM -0700:
> > I agree with your assessment that we can't use task_work_run(), I assume
> > it's also quite bad to just clear the flag?
> > I'm not familiar with these task at all, in which case do they happen?
> > Would you be able to share an easy reproducer so that I/someone can try
> > on various transports?
> 
> You can't just clear the flag without also running the task_work. Hence
> it either needs to be done right there, or leave it pending and let the
> exit to userspace take care of it.

Sorry I didn't develop that idea; the signal path resets the pending
signal when we're done, I assumed we could also reset the TWA_SIGNAL
flag when we're done flushing. That might take a while though, so it's
far from optimal.

> > If it's "rare enough" I'd say sacrificing the connection might make more
> > sense than a busy loop, but if it's becoming common I think we'll need
> > to spend some more time thinking about it...
> > It might be less effort to dig out my async flush commits if this become
> > too complicated, but I wish I could say I have time for it...
> 
> It can be a number of different things - eg fput() will do it.

Hm, schedule_delayed_work on the last fput, ok.
I was wondering what it had to do with the current 9p thread, but since
it's not scheduled on a particular cpu it can pick another cpu to wake
up, that makes sense -- although conceptually it feels rather bad to
interrupt a remote IO because of a local task that can be done later;
e.g. between having the fput wait a bit, or cancel a slow operation like
a 1MB write, I'd rather make the fput wait.
Do you know why that signal/interrupt is needed in the first place?

> The particular case that I came across was io_uring, which will use
> TWA_SIGNAL based task_work for retry operations (and other things). If
> you use io_uring, and depending on how you setup the ring, it can be
> quite common or will never happen. Dropping the connection task_work
> being pending is not a viable solution, I'm afraid.

Thanks for confirming that it's perfectly normal, let's not drop
connections :)

My preferred approach is still to try and restore the async flush code,
but that will take a while -- it's not something that'll work right away
and I want some tests so it won't be ready for this merge window.
If we can have some sort of workaround until then it'll probably be for
the best, but I don't have any other idea (than temporarily clearing the
flag) at this point.

I'll setup some uring IO on 9p and see if I can produce these.

-- 
Dominique