[PATCH tip/core/rcu 1/6] documentation: Document call_rcu() safety mechanisms and limitations

[Paul E. McKenney]

From: "Paul E. McKenney" <paulmck@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

The call_rcu() family of primitives will take action to accelerate
grace periods when the number of callbacks pending on a given CPU
becomes excessive.  Although this safety mechanism can be useful,
it is no substitute for users of call_rcu() having rate-limit controls
in place.  This commit adds this nuance to the documentation.

Reported-by: "Michael S. Tsirkin" <mst@xxxxxxxxxx>
Reported-by: Gleb Natapov <gleb@xxxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
---
 Documentation/RCU/checklist.txt | 19 ++++++++++++++-----
 1 file changed, 14 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-)

diff --git a/Documentation/RCU/checklist.txt b/Documentation/RCU/checklist.txt
index 91266193b8f4..5733e31836b5 100644
--- a/Documentation/RCU/checklist.txt
+++ b/Documentation/RCU/checklist.txt
@@ -256,10 +256,11 @@ over a rather long period of time, but improvements are always welcome!
 		variations on this theme.
 
 	b.	Limiting update rate.  For example, if updates occur only
-		once per hour, then no explicit rate limiting is required,
-		unless your system is already badly broken.  The dcache
-		subsystem takes this approach -- updates are guarded
-		by a global lock, limiting their rate.
+		once per hour, then no explicit rate limiting is
+		required, unless your system is already badly broken.
+		Older versions of the dcache subsystem takes this
+		approach -- updates were guarded by a global lock,
+		limiting their rate.
 
 	c.	Trusted update -- if updates can only be done manually by
 		superuser or some other trusted user, then it might not
@@ -268,7 +269,8 @@ over a rather long period of time, but improvements are always welcome!
 		the machine.
 
 	d.	Use call_rcu_bh() rather than call_rcu(), in order to take
-		advantage of call_rcu_bh()'s faster grace periods.
+		advantage of call_rcu_bh()'s faster grace periods.  (This
+		is only a partial solution, though.)
 
 	e.	Periodically invoke synchronize_rcu(), permitting a limited
 		number of updates per grace period.
@@ -276,6 +278,13 @@ over a rather long period of time, but improvements are always welcome!
 	The same cautions apply to call_rcu_bh(), call_rcu_sched(),
 	call_srcu(), and kfree_rcu().
 
+	Note that although these primitives do take action to avoid memory
+	exhaustion when any given CPU has too many callbacks, a determined
+	user could still exhaust memory.  This is especially the case
+	if a system with a large number of CPUs has been configured to
+	offload all of its RCU callbacks onto a single CPU, or if the
+	system has relatively little free memory.
+
 9.	All RCU list-traversal primitives, which include
 	rcu_dereference(), list_for_each_entry_rcu(), and
 	list_for_each_safe_rcu(), must be either within an RCU read-side
-- 
1.8.1.5

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