Re: [PATCH 08/51] arm, hw-breakpoint: Fix CPU hotplug callback registration

["Srivatsa S. Bhat" <srivatsa.bhat@linux.vnet.ibm.com>]

On 02/06/2014 05:09 PM, Will Deacon wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 06, 2014 at 11:25:46AM +0000, Srivatsa S. Bhat wrote:
>> Hi Will,
> 
> Hello,
> 
>> On 02/06/2014 04:27 PM, Will Deacon wrote:
>>> On Wed, Feb 05, 2014 at 10:06:04PM +0000, Srivatsa S. Bhat wrote:
>>>> Subsystems that want to register CPU hotplug callbacks, as well as perform
>>>> initialization for the CPUs that are already online, often do it as shown
>>>> below:
>>>>
>>>> 	get_online_cpus();
>>>>
>>>> 	for_each_online_cpu(cpu)
>>>> 		init_cpu(cpu);
>>>>
>>>> 	register_cpu_notifier(&foobar_cpu_notifier);
>>>>
>>>> 	put_online_cpus();
>>>>
>>>> This is wrong, since it is prone to ABBA deadlocks involving the
>>>> cpu_add_remove_lock and the cpu_hotplug.lock (when running concurrently
>>>> with CPU hotplug operations).
>>>
>>> Hmm, the code in question (for this patch) runs from an arch_initcall. How
>>> can you generate CPU hotplug operations at that stage?
>>>
>>
>> You are right - in today's design of the init sequence, CPU hotplug
>> operations can't be triggered at that time during boot.
> 
> Phew, so we don't have a bug as the code stands today.

Yes, that's right.

> 
>> However, there have been proposals to boot CPUs in parallel along with the
>> rest of the kernel initialization [1] (and that would need full synchronization
>> with CPU hotplug even at the initcall stage). Of course this needs a lot of
>> auditing and modifications to the CPU hotplug notifiers of various subsystems
>> to make them robust enough to handle the parallel boot; so its not going to
>> happen very soon. But I felt that it would be a good idea to ensure that we
>> get the locking/synchronization right, even if the registrations happen very
>> early during boot today.. you know, just to be on the safer side and also to
>> make the job easier for whoever that is, who tries to implement parallel
>> CPU booting again in the future ;-)
>>
>> [1]. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/1246209
> 
> Makes sense, and this seems like a good start.
> 
>>> so it's best if you take this all via your tree.
>>>
>>
>> Hmm.. I'm not a maintainer myself, so I'm hoping that either Oleg or Rusty
>> or any of the other CPU hotplug maintainers (Thomas/Peter/Ingo) would be
>> willing to take these patches through their tree.
> 
> Well, you can have my ack for this patch:
> 
>   Acked-by: Will Deacon <will.deacon@arm.com>
>

Great! Thanks a lot Will!

Regards,
Srivatsa S. Bhat