• Paul E. McKenney's avatar
    rcu: Add warning to detect half-interrupts · e11ec65c
    Paul E. McKenney authored
    RCU's dyntick-idle code is written to tolerate half-interrupts, that it,
    either an interrupt that invokes rcu_irq_enter() but never invokes the
    corresponding rcu_irq_exit() on the one hand, or an interrupt that never
    invokes rcu_irq_enter() but does invoke the "corresponding" rcu_irq_exit()
    on the other.  These things really did happen at one time, as evidenced
    by this ca-2011 LKML post:
    
    http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20111014170019.GE2428@linux.vnet.ibm.com
    
    The reason why RCU tolerates half-interrupts is that usermode helpers
    used exceptions to invoke a system call from within the kernel such that
    the system call did a normal return (not a return from exception) to
    the calling context.  This caused rcu_irq_enter() to be invoked without
    a matching rcu_irq_exit().  However, usermode helpers have since been
    rewritten to make much more housebroken use of workqueues, kernel threads,
    and do_execve(), and therefore should no longer produce half-interrupts.
    No one knows of any other source of half-interrupts, but then again,
    no one seems insane enough to go audit the entire kernel to verify that
    half-interrupts really are a relic of the past.
    
    This commit therefore adds a pair of WARN_ON_ONCE() calls that will
    trigger in the presence of half interrupts, which the code will continue
    to handle correctly.  If neither of these WARN_ON_ONCE() trigger by
    mid-2021, then perhaps RCU can stop handling half-interrupts, which
    would be a considerable simplification.
    Reported-by: default avatarSteven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org>
    Reported-by: default avatarJoel Fernandes <joel@joelfernandes.org>
    Reported-by: default avatarAndy Lutomirski <luto@kernel.org>
    Signed-off-by: default avatarPaul E. McKenney <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
    Reviewed-by: default avatarJoel Fernandes (Google) <joel@joelfernandes.org>
    e11ec65c
tree.c 132 KB