From b8f8c3cf0a4ac0632ec3f0e15e9dc0c29de917af Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Thomas Gleixner Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2008 17:27:28 +0200 Subject: nohz: prevent tick stop outside of the idle loop Jack Ren and Eric Miao tracked down the following long standing problem in the NOHZ code: scheduler switch to idle task enable interrupts Window starts here ----> interrupt happens (does not set NEED_RESCHED) irq_exit() stops the tick ----> interrupt happens (does set NEED_RESCHED) return from schedule() cpu_idle(): preempt_disable(); Window ends here The interrupts can happen at any point inside the race window. The first interrupt stops the tick, the second one causes the scheduler to rerun and switch away from idle again and we end up with the tick disabled. The fact that it needs two interrupts where the first one does not set NEED_RESCHED and the second one does made the bug obscure and extremly hard to reproduce and analyse. Kudos to Jack and Eric. Solution: Limit the NOHZ functionality to the idle loop to make sure that we can not run into such a situation ever again. cpu_idle() { preempt_disable(); while(1) { tick_nohz_stop_sched_tick(1); <- tell NOHZ code that we are in the idle loop while (!need_resched()) halt(); tick_nohz_restart_sched_tick(); <- disables NOHZ mode preempt_enable_no_resched(); schedule(); preempt_disable(); } } In hindsight we should have done this forever, but ... /me grabs a large brown paperbag. Debugged-by: Jack Ren , Debugged-by: eric miao Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner --- arch/sparc64/kernel/process.c | 2 +- 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-) (limited to 'arch/sparc64') diff --git a/arch/sparc64/kernel/process.c b/arch/sparc64/kernel/process.c index 2084f81a76e1..0798928ba361 100644 --- a/arch/sparc64/kernel/process.c +++ b/arch/sparc64/kernel/process.c @@ -97,7 +97,7 @@ void cpu_idle(void) set_thread_flag(TIF_POLLING_NRFLAG); while(1) { - tick_nohz_stop_sched_tick(); + tick_nohz_stop_sched_tick(1); while (!need_resched() && !cpu_is_offline(cpu)) sparc64_yield(cpu); -- cgit v1.2.3