Re: [PATCH 1/7] work_on_cpu: helper for doing task on a CPU.

[Rusty Russell <rusty@rustcorp.com.au>]

On Friday 24 October 2008 01:36:05 Gautham R Shenoy wrote:
> OK, how about doing the following? That will solve the problem
> of deadlock you pointed out in patch 6.
>
> 		get_online_cpus();
> 		if (likely(per_cpu(cpu_state, cpuid) == CPU_ONLINE)) {
> 			schedule_work_on(cpu, &wfc.work);
> 			flush_work(&wfc.work);
> 		} else if (per_cpu(cpu_state, cpuid) != CPU_DEAD)) {
> 			/*
> 			 * We're the CPU-Hotplug thread. Call the
> 			 * function synchronously so that we don't
> 			 * deadlock with any pending work-item blocked
> 			 * on get_online_cpus()
> 			 */
> 			 cpumask_t  orignal_mask = current->cpus_allowed;
> 			 set_cpus_allowed_ptr(current, &cpumask_of_cpu(cpu);
> 			 wfc.ret = fn(arg);
> 			 set_cpus_allowed_ptr(current, &original_mask);
> 		}

Hi Gautham, Oleg,

Unfortunately that's exactly what I'm trying to get away from: another cpumask 
on the stack :(

The cpu hotplug thread is just whoever wrote 0 to "online" in sys.  And in 
fact it already plays with its cpumask, which should be fixed too.

I think we should BUG_ON(per_cpu(cpu_state, cpuid) != CPU_DEAD) to ensure we 
never use work_on_cpu in the hotplug cpu path.  Then we use 
smp_call_function() for that hard intel_cacheinfo case.  Finally, we fix the 
cpu hotplug path to use schedule_work_on() itself rather than playing games 
with cpumask.

If you agree, I'll spin the patches...

Thanks for the brainpower,
Rusty.