Re: [PATCH v7 clocksource 2/5] clocksource: Retry clock read if long delays detected

Paul E. McKenney
2021-04-10T23:50:54Z

On Sat, Apr 10, 2021 at 10:41:21AM +0200, Thomas Gleixner wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 02 2021 at 15:49, paulmck wrote:
> > This commit therefore re-reads the watchdog clock on either side of
>
> 'This commit' is not any better than 'This patch' and this sentence
> makes no sense. I might be missing something, but how exactly does "the
> commit" re-read the watchdog clock?
>
> git grep 'This patch' Documentation/process/

I will rework this.

> > the read from the clock under test. If the watchdog clock shows an
> > +retry:
> > local_irq_disable();
> > - csnow = cs->read(cs);
> > - clocksource_watchdog_inject_delay();
> > wdnow = watchdog->read(watchdog);
> > + clocksource_watchdog_inject_delay();
> > + csnow = cs->read(cs);
> > + wdagain = watchdog->read(watchdog);
> > local_irq_enable();
> > + delta = clocksource_delta(wdagain, wdnow, watchdog->mask);
> > + wdagain_nsec = clocksource_cyc2ns(delta, watchdog->mult, watchdog->shift);
>
> That variable naming is confusing as hell. This is about the delta and
> not about the second readout of the watchdog.

How about wdagain_delta?

> > + if (wdagain_nsec < 0 || wdagain_nsec > WATCHDOG_MAX_SKEW) {
>
> How exactly is this going negative especially with clocksources which
> have a limited bitwidth? See clocksource_delta().

I thought that I had actually seen this happen, though it is of course
quite possible that it was due to a bug in an early version of my changes.

What I will do is to remove the less-than comparison and test with
a WARN_ON(). If that doesn't trigger, I will drop the WARN_ON().
If it does trigger, I will figure out why.

> > + wderr_nsec = wdagain_nsec;
> > + if (nretries++ < max_read_retries)
> > + goto retry;
> > + }
> > + if (nretries)
> > + pr_warn("timekeeping watchdog on CPU%d: %s read-back delay of %lldns, attempt %d\n",
> > + smp_processor_id(), watchdog->name, wderr_nsec, nretries);
>
> Lacks curly braces around the pr_warn() simply because it's not a single
> line. Breaks my parser :)

OK, will fix. ;-)

> But if this ever happens to exceed max_read_retries, then what's the
> point of continuing at all? The data is known to be crap already.

If there are four delays in four consecutive attempts to read out the
clocks -- with interrupts disabled -- then it is quite possible that the
delay is actually caused by the attempt to read the clock. In which case,
marking the clock bad due to skew is a reasonable choice.

On the other hand, if the four consecutive delays are caused by something
like an NMI storm, then as you say, you have worse problems.

Thanx, Paul

> > /* Clocksource initialized ? */
> > if (!(cs->flags & CLOCK_SOURCE_WATCHDOG) ||
>
> Thanks,
>
> tglx