Re: WARNING in timer_wait_running

[Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>]

On Thu, Apr 06 2023 at 21:37, Thomas Gleixner wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 06 2023 at 00:19, Frederic Weisbecker wrote:
>> We could arrange for doing the same thing as hrtimer_cancel_wait_running()
>> but for posix cpu timers, with taking a similar lock within
>> handle_posix_cpu_timers() that timer_wait_running() could sleep on and
>> inject its PI into.
>
> I have a faint memory that we discussed something like that, but there
> was an issue which completely escaped my memory.

Now memory came back. The problem with posix CPU timers is that it is
not really known to the other side which task is actually doing the
expiry. For process wide timers this could be any task in the process.

For hrtimers this works because the expiring context is known.

> But yes, something like this could work.

Needs some more thought, but still can be made work.

> Though we should quickly shut this warning up for the !RT case by
> providing an callback which does
>
>   WARN_ON_ONCE(IS_ENABLED(CONFIG_PREEMPT_RT);
>
> and let the RT folks deal with it.

OTOH, this is not only a RT issue.

On preemptible kernels the task which collected the expired timers onto
a local list and set the firing bit, can be preempted after dropping
sighand lock. So the other side still can busy wait for quite a while.
Same is obviously true for guests independent of preemption when the
vCPU gets scheduled out.

Thanks,

        tglx