Re: [PATCH 1/1] sched: prevent divide by zero error in cpu_avg_load_per_task

Ingo Molnar
2008-11-29T19:51:47Z

* Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> wrote:

> On Wed, 26 Nov 2008, Steven Rostedt wrote:
> > {
> > struct rq *rq = cpu_rq(cpu);
> > + unsigned long nr_running = rq->nr_running;
> >
> > - if (rq->nr_running)
> > - rq->avg_load_per_task = rq->load.weight / rq->nr_running;
> > + if (nr_running)
> > + rq->avg_load_per_task = rq->load.weight / nr_running;
> > else
> > rq->avg_load_per_task = 0;
>
> I don't think this necessarily fixes it.
>
> There's nothing that keeps gcc from deciding not to reload
> rq->nr_running.
>
> Of course, in _practice_, I don't think gcc ever will (if it decides
> that it will spill, gcc is likely going to decide that it will
> literally spill the local variable to the stack rather than decide to
> reload off the pointer), but it's a valid compiler optimization, and it
> even has a name (rematerialization).
>
> So I suspect that your patch does fix the bug, but it still leaves the
> fairly unlikely _potential_ for it to re-appear at some point.
>
> We have ACCESS_ONCE() as a macro to guarantee that the compiler doesn't
> rematerialize a pointer access. That also would clarify the fact that
> we access something unsafe outside a lock.

Okay - i've queued up the fix below, to be on the safe side.

Ingo

---------------->
>From af6d596fd603219b054c1c90fb16672a9fd441bd Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2008 20:45:15 +0100
Subject: [PATCH] sched: prevent divide by zero error in cpu_avg_load_per_task, update

Regarding the bug addressed in:

4cd4262: sched: prevent divide by zero error in cpu_avg_load_per_task

Linus points out that the fix is not complete:

> There's nothing that keeps gcc from deciding not to reload
> rq->nr_running.
>
> Of course, in _practice_, I don't think gcc ever will (if it decides
> that it will spill, gcc is likely going to decide that it will
> literally spill the local variable to the stack rather than decide to
> reload off the pointer), but it's a valid compiler optimization, and
> it even has a name (rematerialization).
>
> So I suspect that your patch does fix the bug, but it still leaves the
> fairly unlikely _potential_ for it to re-appear at some point.
>
> We have ACCESS_ONCE() as a macro to guarantee that the compiler
> doesn't rematerialize a pointer access. That also would clarify
> the fact that we access something unsafe outside a lock.

So make sure our nr_running value is immutable and cannot change
after we check it for nonzero.

Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
---
kernel/sched.c | 2 +-
1 files changed, 1 insertions(+), 1 deletions(-)

diff --git a/kernel/sched.c b/kernel/sched.c
index 700aa9a..b7480fb 100644
--- a/kernel/sched.c
+++ b/kernel/sched.c
@@ -1453,7 +1453,7 @@ static int task_hot(struct task_struct *p, u64 now, struct sched_domain *sd);
static unsigned long cpu_avg_load_per_task(int cpu)
{
struct rq *rq = cpu_rq(cpu);
- unsigned long nr_running = rq->nr_running;
+ unsigned long nr_running = ACCESS_ONCE(rq->nr_running);

if (nr_running)
rq->avg_load_per_task = rq->load.weight / nr_running;