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SubjectRe: runqueue locks in schedule()
Peter,

> On Wed, 2008-01-16 at 16:29 -0800, stephane eranian wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > As suggested by people on this list, I have changed perfmon2 to use
> > the high resolution timers as the interface to allow timeout-based
> > event set multiplexing. This works around the problems I had with
> > tickless-enabled kernels.
> >
> > Multiplexing is supported in per-thread as well. In that case, the
> > timeout measures virtual time. When the thread is context switched
> > out, we need to save the remainder of the timeout and cancel the
> > timer. When the thread is context switched in, we need to reinstall
> > the timer. These timer save/restore operations have to be done in the
> > switch_to() code near the end of schedule().
> >
> > There are situations where hrtimer_start() may end up trying to
> > acquire the runqueue lock. This happens on a context switch where the
> > current thread is blocking (not preempted) and the new timeout happens
> > to be either in the past or just expiring. We've run into such
> > situations with simple tests.
> >
> > On all architectures, but IA-64, it seems thet the runqueue lock is
> > held until the end of schedule(). On IA-64, the lock is released
> > BEFORE switch_to() for some reason I don't quite remember. That may
> > not even be needed anymore.
> >
> > The early unlocking is controlled by a macro named
> > __ARCH_WANT_UNLOCKED_CTXSW. Defining this macros on X86 (or PPC) fixed
> > our problem.
> >
> > It is not clear to me why the runqueue lock needs to be held up until
> > the end of schedule() on some platforms and not on others. Not that
> > releasing the lock earlier does not necessarily introduce more
> > overhead because the lock is never re-acquired later in the schedule()
> > function.
> >
> > Question:
> > - is it safe to release the lock before switch_to() on all architectures?
>
> I had similar problem when using hrtimers from the scheduler, I extended
> the HRTIMER_CB_IRQSAFE_NO_SOFTIRQ time type to run with cpu_base->lock
> unlocked.
>
I am running into an issue when enabling this flag. Basically, the
timer never fires
when it gets into this situation where in hrtimer_start() the timer
ends up being the
next one to fire. In this mode, hrtimer_enqueue_reprogram() become a NOP. But
then nobody never inserts the time into any queue. There is a comment that
says "caller site takes care of this". Could you elaborate on this?


Thanks.


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