Re: [PATCH V2 Resend 4/4] timer: Migrate running timer

[Viresh Kumar]

On 24 April 2013 16:52, Viresh Kumar <viresh.kumar@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On 9 April 2013 20:22, Viresh Kumar <viresh.kumar@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> [Steven replied to a personal Ping!!, including everybody again]
>>
>> On 9 April 2013 19:25, Steven Rostedt <rostedt@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>> On Tue, 2013-04-09 at 14:05 +0530, Viresh Kumar wrote:
>>>> Ping!!
>>>>
>>>
>>> Remind me again. What problem are you trying to solve?
>>
>> I was trying to migrate a running timer which arms itself, so that we don't
>> keep a cpu busy just for servicing this timer.
>>
>>>> On 20 March 2013 20:43, Viresh Kumar <viresh.kumar@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>>> >
>>>> > Hi Steven/Thomas,
>>>> >
>>>> > I came back to this patch after completing some other stuff and posting
>>>> > wq part of this patchset separately.
>>>> >
>>>> > I got your point and understand how this would fail.
>>>> >
>>>> > @Thomas: I need your opinion first. Do you like this concept of migrating
>>>> > running timer or not? Or you see some basic problem with this concept?
>>>
>>> I'll let Thomas answer this, but to me, this sounds really racy.
>>
>> Sure.
>>
>>>> > If no (i.e. i can go ahead with another version), then i have some solution to
>>>> > fix earlier problems reported by Steven:
>>>> >
>>>> > The problem lies with del_timer_sync() which just checks
>>>> > base->running_timer != timer to check if timer is currently running or not.
>>>> >
>>>> > What if we add another variable in struct timer_list, that will store if we are
>>>> > running timer callback or not. And so, before we call callback in timer core,
>>>> > we will set this variable and will reset it after finishing callback.
>>>> >
>>>> > del_timer_sync() will have something like:
>>>> >
>>>> > if (base->running_timer != timer)
>>>> >     remove timer and return;
>>>
>>> For example, this didn't fix the issue. You removed the timer when it
>>> was still running, because base->running_timer did not equal timer.
>>
>> You are correct and i was stupid. I wanted to write this instead:
>>
>> del_timer_sync() will have something like:
>>
>> if (base->running_timer != timer)
>>     if (timer->running_callback)
>>         go back to its loop...
>>     else
>>         remove timer and return;
>>
>> i.e. if we aren't running on our base cpu, just check if our callback is
>> executing somewhere else due to migration.
>
> Ping!!

Ping!!
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