Re: [patch] softlockup: do the wakeup from a hrtimer

[Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>]

On Tue, 20 Nov 2007 09:46:11 +0100
Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu> wrote:

> Subject: softlockup: do the wakeup from a hrtimer
> From: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
> 
> David Miller reported soft lockup false-positives that trigger on NOHZ 
> due to CPUs idling for more than 10 seconds.
> 
> The solution is to drive the wakeup of the watchdog threads not from the 
> timer tick (which has no guaranteed frequency), but from the watchdog 
> tasks themselves.
> 
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9409
> 
> Reported-by: David Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
> Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
> ---
>  kernel/softlockup.c |    6 +-----
>  1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 5 deletions(-)
> 
> Index: linux/kernel/softlockup.c
> ===================================================================
> --- linux.orig/kernel/softlockup.c
> +++ linux/kernel/softlockup.c
> @@ -100,10 +100,6 @@ void softlockup_tick(void)
>  
>  	now = get_timestamp(this_cpu);
>  
> -	/* Wake up the high-prio watchdog task every second: */
> -	if (now > (touch_timestamp + 1))
> -		wake_up_process(per_cpu(watchdog_task, this_cpu));
> -
>  	/* Warn about unreasonable 10+ seconds delays: */
>  	if (now <= (touch_timestamp + softlockup_thresh))
>  		return;
> @@ -141,7 +137,7 @@ static int watchdog(void *__bind_cpu)
>  	while (!kthread_should_stop()) {
>  		set_current_state(TASK_INTERRUPTIBLE);
>  		touch_softlockup_watchdog();
> -		schedule();
> +		msleep(1000);
>  	}
>  
>  	return 0;

I think you wanted msleep_interruptible() there to avoid contributing to
load average?

The set_current_state() can go away.

This will introduce an up-to-one-second delay in responding to
kthread_should_stop().  Is that bad?