Re: [PATCH 1/7] printk: Hand over printing to console if printing too long

[Sergey Senozhatsky <sergey.senozhatsky.work@gmail.com>]

On (01/06/16 12:38), Sergey Senozhatsky wrote:
> On (01/05/16 15:48), Jan Kara wrote:
> > > [..]
> > > > cond_resched() does its job there, of course. well, a user process still can
> > > > do a lot of call_console_drivers() calls. may be we can check who is calling
> > > > console_unlock() and if we have "!printk_sync && !oops_in_progress" (or just printk_sync
> > > > test) AND a user process then return from console_unlock() doing irq_work_queue()
> > > > and set PRINTK_PENDING_OUTPUT pending bit, the way vprintk_emit() does it.
> > > 
> > > attached two patches, I ended up having on top of yours. just in case.
> > > 
> > >     printk: factor out can_printk_async()
> > >     
> > >     console_unlock() can be called directly or indirectly by a user
> > >     space process, so it can end up doing call_console_drivers() loop,
> > >     which will hold it from returning back to user-space from a syscall
> > >     for unpredictable amount of time.
> > >     
> > >     Factor out can_printk_async() function, which queues an irq work and
> > >     sets a PRINTK_PENDING_OUTPUT pending bit (if we can do async printk).
> > >     vprintk_emit() already does it, add can_printk_async() call to
> > >     console_unlock() for !PF_KTHREAD processes.
> > 
> > I'd be cautious about changing this userspace visible behavior. Someone may
> > be relying on it... I agree that sometimes we can block userspace process
> > in kernel for a long time (e.g. in my testing I often see syslog process
> > doing the printing) but so far I didn't see / was notified about some real
> > problem with this. So unless I see some real user issues with user
> > processes doing printing for too long I would not touch this.
> 
> and w/o a lot of effort (no heavy printk message traffic)

or like this on another setup ([k|u]_ts updated to u64)

# cat /proc/1/time_in_console_unlock
kern:[12.755920] user:[38.367332]

	-ss