• Paul E. McKenney's avatar
    rcu: Move rcu_dynticks_eqs_online() to rcu_cpu_starting() · 2caebefb
    Paul E. McKenney authored
    The purpose of rcu_dynticks_eqs_online() is to adjust the ->dynticks
    counter of an incoming CPU when required.  It is currently invoked
    from rcutree_prepare_cpu(), which runs before the incoming CPU is
    running, and thus on some other CPU.  This makes the per-CPU accesses in
    rcu_dynticks_eqs_online() iffy at best, and it all "works" only because
    the running CPU cannot possibly be in dyntick-idle mode, which means
    that rcu_dynticks_eqs_online() never has any effect.
    
    It is currently OK for rcu_dynticks_eqs_online() to have no effect, but
    only because the CPU-offline process just happens to leave ->dynticks in
    the correct state.  After all, if ->dynticks were in the wrong state on a
    just-onlined CPU, rcutorture would complain bitterly the next time that
    CPU went idle, at least in kernels built with CONFIG_RCU_EQS_DEBUG=y,
    for example, those built by rcutorture scenario TREE04.  One could
    argue that this means that rcu_dynticks_eqs_online() is unnecessary,
    however, removing it would make the CPU-online process vulnerable to
    slight changes in the CPU-offline process.
    
    One could also ask why it is safe to move the rcu_dynticks_eqs_online()
    call so late in the CPU-online process.  Indeed, there was a time when it
    would not have been safe, which does much to explain its current location.
    However, the marking of a CPU as online from an RCU perspective has long
    since moved from rcutree_prepare_cpu() to rcu_cpu_starting(), and all
    that is required is that ->dynticks be set correctly by the time that
    the CPU is marked as online from an RCU perspective.  After all, the RCU
    grace-period kthread does not check to see if offline CPUs are also idle.
    (In case you were curious, this is one reason why there is quiescent-state
    reporting as part of the offlining process.)
    
    This commit therefore moves the call to rcu_dynticks_eqs_online() from
    rcutree_prepare_cpu() to rcu_cpu_starting(), this latter being guaranteed
    to be running on the incoming CPU.  The call to this function must of
    course be placed before this rcu_cpu_starting() announces this CPU's
    presence to RCU.
    Reported-by: default avatarMathieu Desnoyers <mathieu.desnoyers@efficios.com>
    Signed-off-by: default avatarPaul E. McKenney <paulmck@kernel.org>
    2caebefb
tree.c 152 KB