Re: [PATCH v3] rcu: Add a minimum time for marking boot as completed

Uladzislau Rezki
2023-03-05T11:39:11Z

On Fri, Mar 03, 2023 at 09:38:51PM +0000, Joel Fernandes (Google) wrote:
> On many systems, a great deal of boot (in userspace) happens after the
> kernel thinks the boot has completed. It is difficult to determine if
> the system has really booted from the kernel side. Some features like
> lazy-RCU can risk slowing down boot time if, say, a callback has been
> added that the boot synchronously depends on. Further expedited callbacks
> can get unexpedited way earlier than it should be, thus slowing down
> boot (as shown in the data below).
>
> For these reasons, this commit adds a config option
> 'CONFIG_RCU_BOOT_END_DELAY' and a boot parameter rcupdate.boot_end_delay.
> Userspace can also make RCU's view of the system as booted, by writing the
> time in milliseconds to: /sys/module/rcupdate/parameters/rcu_boot_end_delay
> Or even just writing a value of 0 to this sysfs node.
> However, under no circumstance will the boot be allowed to end earlier
> than just before init is launched.
>
> The default value of CONFIG_RCU_BOOT_END_DELAY is chosen as 15s. This
> suites ChromeOS and also a PREEMPT_RT system below very well, which need
> no config or parameter changes, and just a simple application of this patch. A
> system designer can also choose a specific value here to keep RCU from marking
> boot completion. As noted earlier, RCU's perspective of the system as booted
> will not be marker until at least rcu_boot_end_delay milliseconds have passed
> or an update is made via writing a small value (or 0) in milliseconds to:
> /sys/module/rcupdate/parameters/rcu_boot_end_delay.
>
> One side-effect of this patch is, there is a risk that a real-time workload
> launched just after the kernel boots will suffer interruptions due to expedited
> RCU, which previous ended just before init was launched. However, to mitigate
> such an issue (however unlikely), the user should either tune
> CONFIG_RCU_BOOT_END_DELAY to a smaller value than 15 seconds or write a value
> of 0 to /sys/module/rcupdate/parameters/rcu_boot_end_delay, once userspace
> boots, and before launching the real-time workload.
>
> Qiuxu also noted impressive boot-time improvements with earlier version
> of patch. An excerpt from the data he shared:
>
> 1) Testing environment:
> OS : CentOS Stream 8 (non-RT OS)
> Kernel : v6.2
> Machine : Intel Cascade Lake server (2 sockets, each with 44 logical threads)
> Qemu args : -cpu host -enable-kvm, -smp 88,threads=2,sockets=2, …
>
> 2) OS boot time definition:
> The time from the start of the kernel boot to the shell command line
> prompt is shown from the console. [ Different people may have
> different OS boot time definitions. ]
>
> 3) Measurement method (very rough method):
> A timer in the kernel periodically prints the boot time every 100ms.
> As soon as the shell command line prompt is shown from the console,
> we record the boot time printed by the timer, then the printed boot
> time is the OS boot time.
>
> 4) Measured OS boot time (in seconds)
> a) Measured 10 times w/o this patch:
> 8.7s, 8.4s, 8.6s, 8.2s, 9.0s, 8.7s, 8.8s, 9.3s, 8.8s, 8.3s
> The average OS boot time was: ~8.7s
>
> b) Measure 10 times w/ this patch:
> 8.5s, 8.2s, 7.6s, 8.2s, 8.7s, 8.2s, 7.8s, 8.2s, 9.3s, 8.4s
> The average OS boot time was: ~8.3s.
>
> Tested-by: Qiuxu Zhuo <qiuxu.zhuo@intel.com>
> Signed-off-by: Joel Fernandes (Google) <joel@joelfernandes.org>
> ---
> v1->v2:
> Update some comments and description.
> v2->v3:
> Add sysfs param, and update with Test data.
>
> .../admin-guide/kernel-parameters.txt | 12 ++++
> cc_list | 8 +++
> kernel/rcu/Kconfig | 19 ++++++
> kernel/rcu/update.c | 68 ++++++++++++++++++-
> 4 files changed, 106 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
> create mode 100644 cc_list
>
> diff --git a/Documentation/admin-guide/kernel-parameters.txt b/Documentation/admin-guide/kernel-parameters.txt
> index 2429b5e3184b..611de90d9c13 100644
> --- a/Documentation/admin-guide/kernel-parameters.txt
> +++ b/Documentation/admin-guide/kernel-parameters.txt
> @@ -5085,6 +5085,18 @@
> rcutorture.verbose= [KNL]
> Enable additional printk() statements.
>
> + rcupdate.rcu_boot_end_delay= [KNL]
> + Minimum time in milliseconds that must elapse
> + before the boot sequence can be marked complete
> + from RCU's perspective, after which RCU's behavior
> + becomes more relaxed. The default value is also
> + configurable via CONFIG_RCU_BOOT_END_DELAY.
> + Userspace can also mark the boot as completed
> + sooner by writing the time in milliseconds, say once
> + userspace considers the system as booted, to:
> + /sys/module/rcupdate/parameters/rcu_boot_end_delay
> + Or even just writing a value of 0 to this sysfs node.
> +
> rcupdate.rcu_cpu_stall_ftrace_dump= [KNL]
> Dump ftrace buffer after reporting RCU CPU
> stall warning.
> diff --git a/kernel/rcu/Kconfig b/kernel/rcu/Kconfig
> index 9071182b1284..4b5ffa36cbaf 100644
> --- a/kernel/rcu/Kconfig
> +++ b/kernel/rcu/Kconfig
> @@ -217,6 +217,25 @@ config RCU_BOOST_DELAY
>
> Accept the default if unsure.
>
> +config RCU_BOOT_END_DELAY
> + int "Minimum time before RCU may consider in-kernel boot as completed"
> + range 0 120000
> + default 15000
> + help
> + Default value of the minimum time in milliseconds that must elapse
> + before the boot sequence can be marked complete from RCU's perspective,
> + after which RCU's behavior becomes more relaxed.
> + Userspace can also mark the boot as completed sooner than this default
> + by writing the time in milliseconds, say once userspace considers
> + the system as booted, to: /sys/module/rcupdate/parameters/rcu_boot_end_delay.
> + Or even just writing a value of 0 to this sysfs node.
> +
> + The actual delay for RCU's view of the system to be marked as booted can be
> + higher than this value if the kernel takes a long time to initialize but it
> + will never be smaller than this value.
> +
> + Accept the default if unsure.
> +
> config RCU_EXP_KTHREAD
> bool "Perform RCU expedited work in a real-time kthread"
> depends on RCU_BOOST && RCU_EXPERT
> diff --git a/kernel/rcu/update.c b/kernel/rcu/update.c
> index 19bf6fa3ee6a..93138c92136e 100644
> --- a/kernel/rcu/update.c
> +++ b/kernel/rcu/update.c
> @@ -224,18 +224,84 @@ void rcu_unexpedite_gp(void)
> }
> EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL(rcu_unexpedite_gp);
>
> +/*
> + * Minimum time in milliseconds until RCU can consider in-kernel boot as
> + * completed. This can also be tuned at runtime to end the boot earlier, by
> + * userspace init code writing the time in milliseconds (even 0) to:
> + * /sys/module/rcupdate/parameters/rcu_boot_end_delay
> + */
> +static int rcu_boot_end_delay = CONFIG_RCU_BOOT_END_DELAY;
> +
> static bool rcu_boot_ended __read_mostly;
> +static bool rcu_boot_end_called __read_mostly;
> +static DEFINE_MUTEX(rcu_boot_end_lock);
> +
> +static int param_set_rcu_boot_end(const char *val, const struct kernel_param *kp)
> +{
> + uint end_ms;
> + int ret = kstrtouint(val, 0, &end_ms);
> +
> + if (ret)
> + return ret;
> + WRITE_ONCE(*(uint *)kp->arg, end_ms);
> +
> + /*
> + * rcu_end_inkernel_boot() should be called at least once during init
> + * before we can allow param changes to end the boot.
> + */
> + mutex_lock(&rcu_boot_end_lock);
> + rcu_boot_end_delay = end_ms;
> + if (!rcu_boot_ended && rcu_boot_end_called) {
> + mutex_unlock(&rcu_boot_end_lock);
> + rcu_end_inkernel_boot();
> + }
> + mutex_unlock(&rcu_boot_end_lock);
> + return ret;
> +}
> +
> +static const struct kernel_param_ops rcu_boot_end_ops = {
> + .set = param_set_rcu_boot_end,
> + .get = param_get_uint,
> +};
> +module_param_cb(rcu_boot_end_delay, &rcu_boot_end_ops, &rcu_boot_end_delay, 0644);
>
> /*
> - * Inform RCU of the end of the in-kernel boot sequence.
> + * Inform RCU of the end of the in-kernel boot sequence. The boot sequence will
> + * not be marked ended until at least rcu_boot_end_delay milliseconds have passed.
> */
> +void rcu_end_inkernel_boot(void);
> +static void rcu_boot_end_work_fn(struct work_struct *work)
> +{
> + rcu_end_inkernel_boot();
> +}
> +static DECLARE_DELAYED_WORK(rcu_boot_end_work, rcu_boot_end_work_fn);
> +
> void rcu_end_inkernel_boot(void)
> {
> + mutex_lock(&rcu_boot_end_lock);
> + rcu_boot_end_called = true;
> +
> + if (rcu_boot_ended)
> + return;
> +
> + if (rcu_boot_end_delay) {
> + u64 boot_ms = div_u64(ktime_get_boot_fast_ns(), 1000000UL);
> +
> + if (boot_ms < rcu_boot_end_delay) {
> + schedule_delayed_work(&rcu_boot_end_work,
> + rcu_boot_end_delay - boot_ms);
<snip>
urezki@pc638:~/data/raid0/coding/linux-rcu.git$ git diff
diff --git a/kernel/rcu/update.c b/kernel/rcu/update.c
index 93138c92136e..93f426f0f4ec 100644
--- a/kernel/rcu/update.c
+++ b/kernel/rcu/update.c
@@ -289,7 +289,7 @@ void rcu_end_inkernel_boot(void)

if (boot_ms < rcu_boot_end_delay) {
schedule_delayed_work(&rcu_boot_end_work,
- rcu_boot_end_delay - boot_ms);
+ msecs_to_jiffies(rcu_boot_end_delay - boot_ms));
mutex_unlock(&rcu_boot_end_lock);
return;
}
urezki@pc638:~/data/raid0/coding/linux-rcu.git$
<snip>

I think you need to apply above patch. I am not sure maybe Paul
has already mentioned about it. But just in case.

--
Uladzislau Rezki