[PATCH RFC idle 2/3] arm: Avoid invoking RCU when CPU is idle

[paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com (Paul E. McKenney)]

On Fri, Feb 03, 2012 at 02:36:27PM -0500, Steven Rostedt wrote:
> On Fri, 2012-02-03 at 10:41 -0800, Kevin Hilman wrote:
> 
> > > How is it a step backwards if it is already broken. 
> > 
> > Well, I didn't know it was broken. ;) And, as Paul mentioned, this has
> > been broken for a long time. Apparently it's been working well enough
> > for nobody to notice until recently.
> > 
> > > Obviously you haven't actually used any tracing here because it
> > > doesn't work right with things as is.
> > 
> > It's been working well enough for me to debug several idle path problems
> > with tracing.  Admittedly, this has been primarily on UP systems, but
> > I've recently started using the tracing on SMP as well.  (however, due
> > to "coupled" low-power states on OMAP, large parts of the idle path are
> > effectively UP since one CPU0 has to wait for CPU1 to hit a low-power
> > state before it can.)
> 
> It's used by all users of powertop, and we haven't heard about a bug
> yet. This doesn't mean that the bug doesn't exist. The race is extremely
> hard to hit. It's one of those "good bugs". You know, the kind that you
> don't really have to worry about because you are more likely to win the
> lottery, become President of the United States, and find a cure for
> cancer (all those together, not just one) than the chance of hitting
> this bug. But it's a bug regardless and should, unfortunately, be fixed.
> 
> But here's the explanation of the bug:
> 
> As Paul has stated, when rcu_idle_enter() is in effect, the calls to
> rcu_read_lock_* are ignored. Thus we can pretend they don't exist.
> 
> The code in question is the __DO_TRACE() in include/linux/tracepoint.h:
> 
> 		rcu_read_lock_sched_notrace();				\
> 		it_func_ptr = rcu_dereference_sched((tp)->funcs);	\
> 		if (it_func_ptr) {					\
> 			do {						\
> 				it_func = (it_func_ptr)->func;		\
> 				__data = (it_func_ptr)->data;		\
> 				((void(*)(proto))(it_func))(args);	\
> 			} while ((++it_func_ptr)->func);		\
> 		}							\
> 		rcu_read_unlock_sched_notrace();	
> 
> As stated above, the rcu_read_(un)lock_sched_notrace() are worthless
> when in rcu_idle_enter().
> 
> They protect the referencing of tp->funcs, which is an array of all
> funcs that are attached to this tracepoint.
> 
> Now we need to look at kernel/tracepoint.c:
> 
> The protection is needed against a simultaneous insertion or deletion of
> a tracepoint hook. This happens when a user enables or disables tracing.
> 
> Note, this race is even made harder to hit, because due to the static
> branch that controls whether this gets called, will be off if no
> tracepoints are attached. So the race can only happen after at least one
> tracepoint is active.

I agree that this race is hard to hit when running Linux on bare metal.

But consider a Linux kernel running as a guest OS.  Then the host might
preempt the guest in the middle of a tracepoint.  Then from the guest OS's
viewpoint, that VCPU has just stopped, possibly for a very long time --
easily long enough for all the other VCPUs to pass through quiescent
states.  And the guest OS is ignoring that VCPU, so a too-short grace
period could easily happen in this scenario.

							Thanx, Paul

> But if two probes are are added to this tracepoint, then we can hit the
> race. And it is possible to trigger with only one probe on removal.
> 
> When adding or removing a tracepoint, the array (the one that
> it_func_ptr points to) is updated by allocating a new array, copying the
> old array plus or minus the tracpoint being added or removed, setting
> the tp->funcs to the new array, and then it calls call_rcu_sched() to
> free it.
> 
> Now for the bug to hit, something had to be coming in or out of idle,
> and jumping to this code. Between the time it got the it_func_ptr to the
> time it accessed any of that pointer's data in the loop, the tp->func
> had to be updated to the new array, and then all CPUs would have passed
> a schedule point (except the rcu_idle CPUs).
> 
> On uniprocessor, this is not an issue, but on SMP, it is possible that
> with two CPUs the first being in rcu_idle may be ignored, and the second
> would have been adding the tracepoint and then going directly to freeing
> the code. But as tracepoints are very low weight, it is most likely that
> the tracepoints will finish before the first could even free the memory.
> 
> But the chance does exist. As the chance of me winning the lottery,
> becoming President of the United States, and curing cancer also exists!
> 
> ;-)
> 
> -- Steve
> 
>