Re: [patch] Real-Time Preemption, deactivate() scheduling issue

[Eugeny S. Mints]

please consider the following scenario for full RT kernel.

Task A is running then an irq is occured which in turn wakes up irq 
related thread (B) of a higher priority than A.

my current understanding that actual context switch between A and B will 
occure at preempt_schedule_irq() on the "return form irq " path.

in this case the following "if" statement in __schedule() always returns 
false since  preempt_schedule_irq() always sets up  PREEMPT_ACTIVE 
before __schedule() call.

        if ((prev->state & ~TASK_RUNNING_MUTEX) &&
                        !(preempt_count() & PREEMPT_ACTIVE)) {

as result the deactivate() is never called for preempted task A in this 
scenario. BUt if the task A is preempted while not in TASK_RUNNING state 
such behaviour seems incorrect since we get a task in not TASK_RUNNING 
state linked into a run queue.

An example:

drivers/net/irda/sir_dev.c: 76 (2.6.10 kernel)

        spin_lock_irqsave(&dev->tx_lock, flags); /* serialize th other 
tx operations */
        while (dev->tx_buff.len > 0) {    /* wait until tx idle */
                spin_unlock_irqrestore(&dev->tx_lock, flags);
76:             set_current_state(TASK_UNINTERRUPTIBLE);
                schedule_timeout(msecs_to_jiffies(10));
                spin_lock_irqsave(&dev->tx_lock, flags);
        }

At  line 76 irqs are enabled, preemption is enabled.
Let assume the task A executes this code and gets preempted right after 
line 76. Task state is TASK_UNINTERRUPTIBLE but it will not be 
deactevated. Of cource this is the bug in set_current_state() 
utilization in this particular driver but schedule stuff should be 
robust to such bugs I believe. There are a lot such bugs in the kernel I 
believe.

Not sure what the actual reason for !(preempt_count() & PREEMPT_ACTIVE)) 
  condition is but if it's just a sort of optimization (not remove a 
task from run queue if it was preemped in TASK_RUNNING state) then 
probably it should be removed in order to save correctness. Patch attached.

	Eugeny

--- sched.c.orig	2005-03-03 22:35:16.000000000 +0300
+++ sched.c	2005-03-03 22:34:58.000000000 +0300
@@ -2891,8 +2891,7 @@
 	spin_lock_irq(&rq->lock);
 
 	switch_count = &prev->nvcsw; // TODO: temporary - to see it in vmstat
-	if ((prev->state & ~TASK_RUNNING_MUTEX) &&
-                       !(preempt_count() & PREEMPT_ACTIVE)) {
+	if ((prev->state & ~TASK_RUNNING_MUTEX)) {
  		switch_count = &prev->nvcsw;
 		if (unlikely((prev->state & TASK_INTERRUPTIBLE) &&
 				unlikely(signal_pending(prev))))