Re: [PATCH] virtio_net: invoke softirqs after __napi_schedule

From: Rusty Russell
Date: Wed May 16 2012 - 23:37:51 EST


On Wed, 16 May 2012 10:57:13 +0300, "Michael S. Tsirkin" <mst@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> __napi_schedule might raise softirq but nothing
> causes do_softirq to trigger, so it does not in fact
> run. As a result,
> the error message "NOHZ: local_softirq_pending 08"
> sometimes occurs during boot of a KVM guest when the network service is
> started and we are oom:
>
> ...
> Bringing up loopback interface: [ OK ]
> Bringing up interface eth0:
> Determining IP information for eth0...NOHZ: local_softirq_pending 08
> done.
> [ OK ]
> ...
>
> Further, receive queue processing might get delayed
> indefinitely until some interrupt triggers:
> virtio_net expected napi to be run immediately.
>
> One way to cause do_softirq to be executed is by
> invoking local_bh_enable(). As __napi_schedule is
> normally called from bh or irq context, this
> seems to make sense: disable bh before __napi_schedule
> and enable afterwards.
>
> Reported-by: Ulrich Obergfell <uobergfe@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Tested-by: Ulrich Obergfell <uobergfe@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Signed-off-by: Michael S. Tsirkin <mst@xxxxxxxxxx>
> ---
>
> To test, one can hack try_fill_recv to always report oom.
> I'm not sure it's not too late for 3.4, but we can try.
> Rusty, could you review ASAP pls?

It's missing a big comment: it's a very complicated way of calling
do_softirq().

Indeed, this function is only used when we are not in interrupt
context. It's not hot at all, in any ideal scenario.

Acked-by: Rusty Russell <rusty@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
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