Re: [PATCH 3/3] sched,time: atomically increment stime & utime

From: Oleg Nesterov
Date: Sat Aug 16 2014 - 10:59:07 EST


Aaah, Rik, I am sorry!

You documented this in 0/3 which I didn't bother to read.

Sorry for noise.

On 08/16, Oleg Nesterov wrote:
>
> On 08/15, riel@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> >
> > --- a/kernel/sched/cputime.c
> > +++ b/kernel/sched/cputime.c
> > @@ -605,9 +605,12 @@ static void cputime_adjust(struct task_cputime *curr,
> > * If the tick based count grows faster than the scheduler one,
> > * the result of the scaling may go backward.
> > * Let's enforce monotonicity.
> > + * Atomic exchange protects against concurrent cputime_adjust.
> > */
> > - prev->stime = max(prev->stime, stime);
> > - prev->utime = max(prev->utime, utime);
> > + while (stime > (rtime = ACCESS_ONCE(prev->stime)))
> > + cmpxchg(&prev->stime, rtime, stime);
> > + while (utime > (rtime = ACCESS_ONCE(prev->utime)))
> > + cmpxchg(&prev->utime, rtime, utime);
> >
> > out:
> > *ut = prev->utime;
>
> I am still not sure about this change. At least I think it needs some
> discussion.
>
> Let me repeat, afaics this can lead to inconsistent results. Just
> suppose that the caller of thread_group_cputime_adjusted() gets a long
> preemption between thread_group_cputime() and cputime_adjust(), and
> the numbers in signal->prev_cputime grow significantly when this task
> resumes. If cputime_adjust() sees both prev->stime and prev->utime
> updated everything is fine. But we can race with cputime_adjust() on
> another CPU and miss, say, the change in ->utime.
>
> IOW. To simplify, suppose that thread_group_cputime(T) fills task_cputime
> with zeros. Then the caller X is preempted.
>
> Another task does thread_group_cputime(T) and this time task_cputime is
> { .utime = A_LOT_U, .stime = A_LOT_S }. This task calls cputime_adjust()
> and sets prev->stime = A_LOT_S.
>
> X resumes, calls cputime_adjust(), and returns { 0, A_LOT_S }.
>
> If you think that we do not care, probably I won't argue. But at least
> this should be documented/discussed. And if we can tolerate this, then we
> can probably simply remove the scale_stime recalculation and change it to
> just do
>
> static void cputime_adjust(struct task_cputime *curr,
> struct cputime *prev,
> cputime_t *ut, cputime_t *st)
> {
> cputime_t rtime, stime, utime;
> /*
> * Let's enforce monotonicity.
> * Atomic exchange protects against concurrent cputime_adjust.
> */
> while (stime > (rtime = ACCESS_ONCE(prev->stime)))
> cmpxchg(&prev->stime, rtime, stime);
> while (utime > (rtime = ACCESS_ONCE(prev->utime)))
> cmpxchg(&prev->utime, rtime, utime);
>
> *ut = prev->utime;
> *st = prev->stime;
> }
>
> Oleg.

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