Re: Stupid futex question - 2.6.33-rc7-mmotm0210

From: Valdis . Kletnieks
Date: Thu Feb 18 2010 - 11:43:25 EST


(Adding some cc: to the list)

On Thu, 18 Feb 2010 15:37:59 +0100, Peter Zijlstra said:
> On Thu, 2010-02-18 at 09:04 -0500, Valdis.Kletnieks@xxxxxx wrote:
> > Kernel: x86_64 2.6.33-rc7-mmotm0210
> >
> > I'm debugging a problem where pulseaudio is getting killed with a SIGKILL
> > out of the blue. It appears to be a problem where pulseaudio sets
> > RLIMIT_RTTIME and the bound gets exceeded. Analysis with 'top' shows
> > a short spike of 96% system time, and the tail end of strace shows this:
> >
> > [pid 25065] 01:50:20.371484 ioctl(28, USBDEVFS_CONTROL, 0x7fd3d76f630c) = 0 <0.000015>
> > [pid 25065] 01:50:20.371548 ioctl(28, 0x40045532, 0x7fd3d76f636c) = 0 <0.000016>
> > [pid 25065] 01:50:20.371611 open("/dev/snd/pcmC0D0p", O_RDWR|O_NONBLOCK|O_CLOEXEC <unfinished ...>
> > [pid 25064] 01:50:20.371678 <... write resumed> ) = 8 <0.002104>
> > [pid 25064] 01:50:20.371718 futex(0xc2ec00, FUTEX_WAIT_PRIVATE, 0, NULL <unfinished ...>
> > [pid 25066] 01:50:21.408392 +++ killed by SIGKILL +++
> > PANIC: handle_group_exit: 25066 leader 25064
> > [pid 25065] 01:50:21.408442 +++ killed by SIGKILL +++
> > PANIC: handle_group_exit: 25065 leader 25064
> > 01:50:21.420354 +++ killed by SIGKILL +++
> >
> > thread 25064 apparently gets gunned down due to RTTIME because it spent a whole
> > second in a futex() call - is it reasonable for futex() to not return for that
> > long?
> >
> > In other words - kernel bug because futex() should return, or pulseaudio bug
> > for not understanding futex() can snooze a while?
> >
> > If a kernel bug, anybody got a better idea than nuking the RLIMIT_RTTIME call,
> > waiting for it to repeat (takes between 1 minute and 1 hour or so), and
> > whomping it a few times with sysrq-T?
>
> is that second spend in processing sysrq-t?

No, currently that second is spent in a futex() syscall - I'm wondering:

1) should it get killed for RLIMIT_RTTIME because it's been in a futex()
for multiple seconds? It seems suspicious - docs say a blocking syscall
resets RTTIME - so if futex() blocks it shouldn't kill, and if it's in the
kernel for a second without blocking it's a bug too.

2) Is sysrq-T my best bet here, or should I be trying something else first?

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