RE: [RFC 1/7] mac80211: Add check for napi handle before WARN_ON

[Rakesh Pillai]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Johannes Berg <johannes@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Sent: Friday, July 24, 2020 1:37 AM
> To: Rakesh Pillai <pillair@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>; ath10k@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Cc: linux-wireless@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx; linux-kernel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx;
> kvalo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx; davem@xxxxxxxxxxxxx; kuba@xxxxxxxxxx;
> netdev@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx; dianders@xxxxxxxxxxxx; evgreen@xxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Re: [RFC 1/7] mac80211: Add check for napi handle before
> WARN_ON
> 
> On Thu, 2020-07-23 at 23:56 +0530, Rakesh Pillai wrote:
> 
> > > > -	WARN_ON_ONCE(softirq_count() == 0);
> > > > +	WARN_ON_ONCE(napi && softirq_count() == 0);
> > >
> > > FWIW, I'm pretty sure this is incorrect - we make assumptions on
> > > softirqs being disabled in mac80211 for serialization and in place of
> > > some locking, I believe.
> > >
> >
> > I checked this, but let me double confirm.
> > But after this change, no packet is submitted from driver in a softirq
> context.
> > So ideally this should take care of serialization.
> 
> I'd guess that we have some reliance on BHs already being disabled, for
> things like u64 sync updates, or whatnot. I mean, we did "rx_ni()" for a
> reason ... Maybe lockdep can help catch some of the issues.
> 
> But couldn't you be in a thread and have BHs disabled too?

This would ideally beat the purpose and possibly hurt the other subsystems running on the same core.

> 
> johannes