Re: [PATCH 02/11] wait: Provide infrastructure to deal with nested blocking

Peter Zijlstra
2014-10-02T08:07:59Z

On Mon, Sep 29, 2014 at 11:02:21PM +0200, Oleg Nesterov wrote:
> On 09/24, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> >
> > There are a few places that call blocking primitives from wait loops,
> > provide infrastructure to support this without the typical
> > task_struct::state collision.
> >
> > We record the wakeup in wait_queue_t::flags which leaves
> > task_struct::state free to be used by others.
>
> Sorry for delay. FWIW,
>
> Reviewed-by: Oleg Nesterov <oleg@redhat.com>
>
> > +/*
> > + * DEFINE_WAIT_FUNC(wait, woken_wait_func);
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> woken_wake_function ;)
>
> > +int woken_wake_function(wait_queue_t *wait, unsigned mode, int sync, void *key)
> > +{
> > + /*
> > + * Although this function is called under waitqueue lock, LOCK
> > + * doesn't imply write barrier and the users expects write
> > + * barrier semantics on wakeup functions. The following
> > + * smp_wmb() is equivalent to smp_wmb() in try_to_wake_up()
> > + * and is paired with set_mb() in wait_woken().
> > + */
> > + smp_wmb(); /* C */
> > + wait->flags |= WQ_FLAG_WOKEN;
>
> Perhaps it is just me, but I was a bit confused by the comment above wmb().
> Afaics, it is not that "users expects write barrier semantics", just we
> need to ensure that
>
> CONDITION = true;
> wait->flags |= WQ_FLAG_WOKEN;
>
> can't be reordered (and this differs from smp_wmb() in try_to_wake_up()).
> Otherwise we can obviously race with
>
> // wait_woken() -> set_mb()
> wait->flags &= ~WQ_FLAG_WOKEN;
> mb();
>
> if (CONDITION)
> break;
>

Yes, that comment could be clearer. It is however, to me, the 'same' as
a regular wakeup in that we need to separate whatever state changes
before the wakeup (CONDITION=true typically) from whatever writes are
required to affect the wakeup (->state=TASK_RUNNING typically, +optional
enqueuing on runqueues and all that).