Re: [PATCH] [request for inclusion] Realtime LSM

Con Kolivas
2005-01-14T02:09:53Z

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2561 bytes --]

utz lehmann wrote:
> On Thu, 2005-01-13 at 16:25 -0500, Lee Revell wrote:
>
>>On Thu, 2005-01-13 at 22:07 +0100, Arjan van de Ven wrote:
>>
>>>On Thu, Jan 13, 2005 at 03:04:26PM -0600, Jack O'Quin wrote:
>>>
>>>>(Probably, this simplistic analysis misses some other, more subtle,
>>>>factors.)
>>>
>>>I think you can do nasty things to the locks held by those threads too
>>>
>>>
>>>>RT threads should not do FS writes of their own. But, a badly broken
>>>>or malicious one could, I suppose. So, that might provide a mechanism
>>>>for losing more data than usual. Is that what you had in mind?
>>>
>>>basically yes.
>>>note that "FS writes" can come from various things, including library calls
>>>made and such. But I think you got my point; even though it might seem a bit
>>>theoretical it sure is unpleasant.
>>>
>>
>>I added Con to the cc: because this thread is starting to converge with
>>an email discussion we've been having.
>>
>>The basic issue is that the current semantics of SCHED_FIFO seem make
>>the deadlock/data corruption due to runaway RT thread issue difficult.
>>The obvious solution is a new scheduling class equivalent to SCHED_FIFO
>>but with a mechanism for the kernel to demote the offending thread to
>>SCHED_OTHER in an emergency. The problem can be solved in userspace
>>with a SCHED_FIFO watchdog thread that runs at a higher RT priority than
>>all other RT processes.
>>
>>This all seems to imply that introducing an rlimit for MAX_RT_PRIO is an
>>excellent solution. The RT watchdog thread could run as root, and the
>>rlimit would be used to ensure than even nonroot users in the RT group
>>could never preempt the watchdog thread.
>
>
> Just an idea. What about throttling runaway RT tasks?
> If the system spend more than 98% in RT tasks for 5s consider this as a
> _fatal error_. Print an error message and throttle RT tasks by inserting
> ticks where only SCHED_OTHER tasks allowed. For a limit of 98% this
> means one SCHED_OTHER only tick all 50 ticks.
>
> The limit and timeout should be configurable and of course it can be
> disabled.
>
> I know this is against RT task preempt all SCHED_OTHER but this is only
> for a fatal system state to be able to recover sanely. A locked up
> machine is is the worse alternative.

There is a patch in -mm currently designed to use a sysrq key
combination which converts all real time tasks to sched normal to save
you if you desire in a lockup situation. We do want to preserve RT
scheduling behaviour at all times without caveats for privileged users.

Cheers,
Con

[-- Attachment #2: OpenPGP digital signature --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 256 bytes --]