Re: [RFC PATCH 0/6] CPU hotplug: Reverse invocation of notifiers during CPU hotplug

[Rusty Russell <rusty@rustcorp.com.au>]

On Wed, 25 Jul 2012 18:30:41 +0200 (CEST), Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de> wrote:
> The problem with the current notifiers is, that we only have ordering
> for a few specific callbacks, but we don't have the faintest idea in
> which order all other random stuff is brought up and torn down.
> 
> So I started experimenting with the following:
> 
> struct hotplug_event {
>        int (*bring_up)(unsigned int cpu);
>        int (*tear_down)(unsigned int cpu);
> };
> 
> enum hotplug_events {
>      CPU_HOTPLUG_START,
>      CPU_HOTPLUG_CREATE_THREADS,
>      CPU_HOTPLUG_INIT_TIMERS,
>      ...
>      CPU_HOTPLUG_KICK_CPU,
>      ...
>      CPU_HOTPLUG_START_THREADS,
>      ...
>      CPU_HOTPLUG_SET_ONLINE,
>      ...
>      CPU_HOTPLUG_MAX_EVENTS,
> };

This looks awfully like hardcoded a list of calls, without the
readability :)

OK, I finally got off my ass and looked at the different users of cpu
hotplug.  Some are just doing crazy stuff, but most seem to fall into
two types:

1) Hardware-style cpu callbacks (CPU_UP_PREPARE & CPU_DEAD)
2) Live cpu callbacks (CPU_ONLINE & CPU_DOWN_PREPARE)

I think this is what Srivatsa was referring to with "physical" and
"logical" parts.  Maybe we should explicitly split them, with the idea
that we'd automatically call the other one if we hit an error.

struct cpu_hotplug_physical {
       int (*coming)(unsigned int cpu);
       void (*gone)(unsigned int cpu);
};

struct cpu_hotplug_logical {
       void (*arrived)(unsigned int cpu);
       int (*going)(unsigned int cpu);
};

Several of the live cpu callbacks seem racy to me, since we could be
running userspace tasks before CPU_ONLINE.  It'd be nice to fix this,
too.

Anyway, if we get a model which fits 90%, we can always open-code the
tricky ones.

Cheers,
Rusty.