Re: [RFC][PATCH] sched/core: Tweak wait_task_inactive() to force dequeue sched_delayed tasks

Frederic Weisbecker
2025-04-22T09:55:34Z

Le Tue, Apr 22, 2025 at 10:56:28AM +0200, Peter Zijlstra a écrit :
> On Mon, Apr 21, 2025 at 09:43:45PM -0700, John Stultz wrote:
> > It was reported that in 6.12, smpboot_create_threads() was
> > taking much longer then in 6.6.
> >
> > I narrowed down the call path to:
> > smpboot_create_threads()
> > -> kthread_create_on_cpu()
> > -> kthread_bind()
> > -> __kthread_bind_mask()
> > ->wait_task_inactive()
> >
> > Where in wait_task_inactive() we were regularly hitting the
> > queued case, which sets a 1 tick timeout, which when called
> > multiple times in a row, accumulates quickly into a long
> > delay.
>
> Argh, this is all stupid :-(
>
> The whole __kthread_bind_*() thing is a bit weird, but fundamentally it
> tries to avoid a race vs current. Notably task_state::flags is only ever
> modified by current, except here.
>
> delayed_dequeue is fine, except wait_task_inactive() hasn't been
> told about it (I hate that function, murder death kill etc.).
>
> But more fundamentally, we've put so much crap into struct kthread and
> kthread() itself by now, why not also pass down the whole per-cpu-ness
> thing and simply do it there. Heck, Frederic already made it do affinity
> crud.
>
> On that, Frederic, *why* do you do that after started=1, that seems like
> a weird place, should this not be done before complete() ?, like next to
> sched_setscheduler_nocheck() or so?

You mean the call to kthread_affine_node() ? Because it is a default behaviour
that only happens if no call to kthread_bind() or kthread_affine_preferred()
has been issued before the first wake up to the kthread.

If kthread_affine_node() was called before everything by default instead
then we would get its unconditional overhead for all started kthreads. Plus
kthread_bind() and kthread_affine_preferred() would need to undo
kthread_affine_node().

Thanks.

--
Frederic Weisbecker
SUSE Labs