Re: [PATCH 1/2] arm64/entry: Fix involuntary preemption exception masking

[Thomas Gleixner <tglx@kernel.org>]

On Fri, Mar 20 2026 at 14:57, Mark Rutland wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 20, 2026 at 03:11:20PM +0100, Thomas Gleixner wrote:
>> Yes. It's not an optimization. It's a correctness issue.
>> 
>> If the interrupted context is RCU idle then you have to carefully go
>> back to that context. So that the context can tell RCU it is done with
>> the idle state and RCU has to pay attention again. Otherwise all of this
>> becomes imbalanced.
>> 
>> This is about context-level nesting:
>> 
>>         ...
>> L1.A    ct_cpuidle_enter();
>> 
>>                         -> interrupt
>>  L2.A                           ct_irq_enter();
>>                                 ...             // Set NEED_RESCHED
>>  L2.B                           ct_irq_exit();
>>                                
>>         ...
>> L1.B    ct_cpuidle_exit();
>> 
>> Scheduling between #L2.B and #L1.B makes RCU rightfully upset. 
>
> I suspect I'm missing something obvious here:
>
> * Regardless of nesting, I see that scheduling between L2.B and L1.B is
>   broken because RCU isn't watching.
>
> * I'm not sure whether there's a problem with scheduling between L2.A
>   and L2.B, which is what arm64 used to do, and what arm64 would do
>   after this patch.

The only reason why it "works" is that the idle task has preemption
permanently disabled, so it won't really schedule even if need_resched()
is set. So it "works" by chance and not by design.

Apply the patch below and watch the show.

> Thanks for all of this. Even if I'm confused right now, it's very
> helpful!

RCU induced confusion is perfectly normal. Everyone suffers from that at
some point. Welcome to the club.

Thanks,

        tglx
---
--- a/kernel/entry/common.c
+++ b/kernel/entry/common.c
@@ -187,9 +187,10 @@ static inline bool arch_irqentry_exit_ne
 
 void raw_irqentry_exit_cond_resched(void)
 {
+	rcu_irq_exit_check_preempt();
+
 	if (!preempt_count()) {
 		/* Sanity check RCU and thread stack */
-		rcu_irq_exit_check_preempt();
 		if (IS_ENABLED(CONFIG_DEBUG_ENTRY))
 			WARN_ON_ONCE(!on_thread_stack());
 		if (need_resched() && arch_irqentry_exit_need_resched())