Re: [PATCH RT] rt: Make cpu_chill() use hrtimer instead of msleep()

[Steven Rostedt]

On Fri, 7 Feb 2014 12:30:06 +0100
Sebastian Andrzej Siewior <bigeasy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> * Steven Rostedt | 2014-02-05 11:51:25 [-0500]:
> 
> >Ulrich Obergfell pointed out that cpu_chill() calls msleep() which is woken
> >up by the ksoftirqd running the TIMER softirq. But as the cpu_chill() is
> >called from softirq context, it may block the ksoftirqd() from running, in
> >which case, it may never wake up the msleep() causing the deadlock.
> >
> >I checked the vmcore, and irq/74-qla2xxx is stuck in the msleep() call,
> >running on CPU 8. The one ksoftirqd that is stuck, happens to be the one that
> >runs on CPU 8, and it is blocked on a lock held by irq/74-qla2xxx. As that
> >ksoftirqd is the one that will wake up irq/74-qla2xxx, and it happens to be
> >blocked on a lock that irq/74-qla2xxx holds, we have our deadlock.
> 
> could you please tell me which two locks are invovled here?
> 

Looks to be the lock of the block softirq. I don't have the core dump
anymore, but from what I could tell the ksoftirqd was blocked on the
block softirq lock, where the block softirq handler did a msleep
(called by the qla2xxx interrupt handler).

Looking at trigger_softirq() in block/blk-softirq.c, it can do a
smp_callfunction() to another cpu to run the block softirq. If that
happens to be the cpu where the qla2xx irq handler is doing the block
softirq and is in a middle of a msleep(), I believe the ksoftirqd will
try to run the softirq. If it does that, then BOOM, it's deadlocked
because the ksoftirqd will never run the timer softirq either.

-- Steve
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