Re: [Bug #11970] gettimeofday return a old time in mmbench

[Rafael J. Wysocki]

On Thursday, 4 of December 2008, Ingo Molnar wrote:
> 
> * Rafael J. Wysocki <rjw@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> > This message has been generated automatically as a part of a report
> > of recent regressions.
> > 
> > The following bug entry is on the current list of known regressions
> > from 2.6.27.  Please verify if it still should be listed and let me know
> > (either way).
> > 
> > 
> > Bug-Entry	: http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=11970
> > Subject		: gettimeofday return a old time in mmbench
> > Submitter	: alexs <alex.shi@xxxxxxxxx>
> > Date		: 2008-11-06 23:57 (28 days old)
> > First-Bad-Commit: http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=commit;h=99ebcf8285df28f32fd2d1c19a7166e70f00309c
> > Handled-By	: Ingo Molnar <mingo@xxxxxxx>
> > 		  Thomas Gleixner <tglx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > 		  Yanmin Zhang <yanmin_zhang@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> 
> fixed by the patch below from John Stultz, queued up in 
> tip/timers/urgent.
> 
> The bisection-blamed merge commit above likely just causes a random shift 
> in the timings or compiler optimization conditions of this code - making 
> the bug more likely to trigger. The bug/race itself is old.

The patch has been merged, so the bug is closed now.

Thanks,
Rafael


> ------------------------->
> From 6c9bacb41c10ba84ff68f238e234d96f35fb64f7 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
> From: john stultz <johnstul@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Date: Mon, 1 Dec 2008 18:34:41 -0800
> Subject: [PATCH] time: catch xtime_nsec underflows and fix them
> 
> Impact: fix time warp bug
> 
> Alex Shi, along with Yanmin Zhang have been noticing occasional time
> inconsistencies recently. Through their great diagnosis, they found that
> the xtime_nsec value used in update_wall_time was occasionally going
> negative. After looking through the code for awhile, I realized we have
> the possibility for an underflow when three conditions are met in
> update_wall_time():
> 
>   1) We have accumulated a second's worth of nanoseconds, so we
>      incremented xtime.tv_sec and appropriately decrement xtime_nsec.
>      (This doesn't cause xtime_nsec to go negative, but it can cause it
>       to be small).
> 
>   2) The remaining offset value is large, but just slightly less then
>      cycle_interval.
> 
>   3) clocksource_adjust() is speeding up the clock, causing a
>      corrective amount (compensating for the increase in the multiplier
>      being multiplied against the unaccumulated offset value) to be
>      subtracted from xtime_nsec.
> 
> This can cause xtime_nsec to underflow.
> 
> Unfortunately, since we notify the NTP subsystem via second_overflow()
> whenever we accumulate a full second, and this effects the error
> accumulation that has already occured, we cannot simply revert the
> accumulated second from xtime nor move the second accumulation to after
> the clocksource_adjust call without a change in behavior.
> 
> This leaves us with (at least) two options:
> 
> 1) Simply return from clocksource_adjust() without making a change if we
>    notice the adjustment would cause xtime_nsec to go negative.
> 
> This would work, but I'm concerned that if a large adjustment was needed
> (due to the error being large), it may be possible to get stuck with an
> ever increasing error that becomes too large to correct (since it may
> always force xtime_nsec negative). This may just be paranoia on my part.
> 
> 2) Catch xtime_nsec if it is negative, then add back the amount its
>    negative to both xtime_nsec and the error.
> 
> This second method is consistent with how we've handled earlier rounding
> issues, and also has the benefit that the error being added is always in
> the oposite direction also always equal or smaller then the correction
> being applied. So the risk of a corner case where things get out of
> control is lessened.
> 
> This patch fixes bug 11970, as tested by Yanmin Zhang
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=11970
> 
> Reported-by: alex.shi@xxxxxxxxx
> Signed-off-by: John Stultz <johnstul@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Acked-by: "Zhang, Yanmin" <yanmin_zhang@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Tested-by: "Zhang, Yanmin" <yanmin_zhang@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@xxxxxxx>
> ---
>  kernel/time/timekeeping.c |   22 ++++++++++++++++++++++
>  1 files changed, 22 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
> 
> diff --git a/kernel/time/timekeeping.c b/kernel/time/timekeeping.c
> index e7acfb4..fa05e88 100644
> --- a/kernel/time/timekeeping.c
> +++ b/kernel/time/timekeeping.c
> @@ -518,6 +518,28 @@ void update_wall_time(void)
>  	/* correct the clock when NTP error is too big */
>  	clocksource_adjust(offset);
>  
> +	/*
> +	 * Since in the loop above, we accumulate any amount of time
> +	 * in xtime_nsec over a second into xtime.tv_sec, its possible for
> +	 * xtime_nsec to be fairly small after the loop. Further, if we're
> +	 * slightly speeding the clocksource up in clocksource_adjust(),
> +	 * its possible the required corrective factor to xtime_nsec could
> +	 * cause it to underflow.
> +	 *
> +	 * Now, we cannot simply roll the accumulated second back, since
> +	 * the NTP subsystem has been notified via second_overflow. So
> +	 * instead we push xtime_nsec forward by the amount we underflowed,
> +	 * and add that amount into the error.
> +	 *
> +	 * We'll correct this error next time through this function, when
> +	 * xtime_nsec is not as small.
> +	 */
> +	if (unlikely((s64)clock->xtime_nsec < 0)) {
> +		s64 neg = -(s64)clock->xtime_nsec;
> +		clock->xtime_nsec = 0;
> +		clock->error += neg << (NTP_SCALE_SHIFT - clock->shift);
> +	}
> +
>  	/* store full nanoseconds into xtime after rounding it up and
>  	 * add the remainder to the error difference.
>  	 */
--
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