Skip to contentSkip to conversation

hrtimer: remove deadlock due to waiting on IPI in softirq context

RFC PATCH In review Rik van Riel 2 participants 3 messages Mar 5, 2014

lore
Share & tools
lore
#0 lore raw

RFC PATCH 1/1 hrtimer: remove deadlock due to waiting on IPI in softirq context

There appears to be a deadlock in the hrtimer code. Specifically, clock_was_set() calls an IPI with wait=1, from softirq context.

Waiting for IPIs to complete in irq context can lead to a deadlock, because the current code (that was interrupted) might be holding some kind of lock, that another CPU is waiting for with spin_lock_irq or similar.

In other words, the current CPU may need to release a resource, before the IPI can be handled by one of the destination CPUs.

To my untrained eye, it does not look like this patch introduces a new bug to the timer code, but that is hard to ascertain with the timer code. so I am posting this as an RFC for the timer gods to hurt their brains on :)

This bug was introduced by 54cdfdb4 in early 2007 (the original hrtimer code patch).

Not-yet-signed-off-by Rik van Riel <[email protected]>
Cc Benjamin Herrenschmidt <[email protected]>
Cc Ingo Molnar <[email protected]>
Cc Thomas Gleixner <[email protected]>
Cc Prarit Bhargava <[email protected]>
Cc Frederic Weisbecker <[email protected]>
Cc Clark Williams <[email protected]>
---
 kernel/hrtimer.c | 2 +-
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)
kernel/hrtimer.c +1 -1
index 0909436..19145ec 100644
@@ -771,7 +771,7 @@ void clock_was_set(void)
 {
 #ifdef CONFIG_HIGH_RES_TIMERS
 	/* Retrigger the CPU local events everywhere */
-	on_each_cpu(retrigger_next_event, NULL, 1);
+	on_each_cpu(retrigger_next_event, NULL, 0);
 #endif
 	timerfd_clock_was_set();
 }
#1 lore raw
Quoted 2 lines · Rik van Riel

There appears to be a deadlock in the hrtimer code. Specifically, clock_was_set() calls an IPI with wait=1, from softirq context.

This should not be called from softirq context.

Quoted 8 lines

Waiting for IPIs to complete in irq context can lead to a deadlock, because the current code (that was interrupted) might be holding some kind of lock, that another CPU is waiting for with spin_lock_irq or similar.

In other words, the current CPU may need to release a resource, before the IPI can be handled by one of the destination CPUs.

Quoted 7 lines

To my untrained eye, it does not look like this patch introduces a new bug to the timer code, but that is hard to ascertain with the timer code. so I am posting this as an RFC for the timer gods to hurt their brains on :)

This bug was introduced by 54cdfdb4 in early 2007 (the original hrtimer code patch).

Right and we had some issues with that until we moved the calls to clock_was_set() out of lock held regions.

The only call which happens from interrupt context is in update_wall_time(). And that one definitely holds no locks which are relevant.

On which kernel are you observing the issue?

Can you provide the debug info which made you look into this?

Thanks,

tglx

Quoted 26 lines
Not-yet-signed-off-by Rik van Riel <[email protected]>
Cc Benjamin Herrenschmidt <[email protected]>
Cc Ingo Molnar <[email protected]>
Cc Thomas Gleixner <[email protected]>
Cc Prarit Bhargava <[email protected]>
Cc Frederic Weisbecker <[email protected]>
Cc Clark Williams <[email protected]>
---
 kernel/hrtimer.c | 2 +-
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)
kernel/hrtimer.c +1 -1
index 0909436..19145ec 100644
@@ -771,7 +771,7 @@ void clock_was_set(void)
 {
 #ifdef CONFIG_HIGH_RES_TIMERS
 	/* Retrigger the CPU local events everywhere */
-	on_each_cpu(retrigger_next_event, NULL, 1);
+	on_each_cpu(retrigger_next_event, NULL, 0);
 #endif
 	timerfd_clock_was_set();
 }
#2 lore raw
Quoted 19 lines · Thomas Gleixner
Quoted 2 lines · Rik van Riel

There appears to be a deadlock in the hrtimer code. Specifically, clock_was_set() calls an IPI with wait=1, from softirq context.

This should not be called from softirq context.

Quoted 13 lines

Waiting for IPIs to complete in irq context can lead to a deadlock, because the current code (that was interrupted) might be holding some kind of lock, that another CPU is waiting for with spin_lock_irq or similar.

In other words, the current CPU may need to release a resource, before the IPI can be handled by one of the destination CPUs.

To my untrained eye, it does not look like this patch introduces a new bug to the timer code, but that is hard to ascertain with the timer code. so I am posting this as an RFC for the timer gods to hurt their brains on :)

Quoted 5 lines
Quoted 2 lines

This bug was introduced by 54cdfdb4 in early 2007 (the original hrtimer code patch).

Right and we had some issues with that until we moved the calls to clock_was_set() out of lock held regions.

Ahh indeed, the bug got fixed already :)

Quoted 5 lines

The only call which happens from interrupt context is in update_wall_time(). And that one definitely holds no locks which are relevant.

On which kernel are you observing the issue?

This was RHEL6, and I saw that the immediate function was still the same upstream.

I forgot to check that clock_was_set() is now called in a different way. My bad.