Re: [GIT RFC PULL rcu/urgent] Prevent Kconfig from asking pointless questions

[Ingo Molnar]

* Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> On Sat, Apr 18, 2015 at 03:03:41PM +0200, Ingo Molnar wrote:
> > 
> > * Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > 
> > > Hello, Ingo,
> > > 
> > > This series contains a single change that fixes Kconfig asking pointless
> > > questions (https://lkml.org/lkml/2015/4/14/616).  This is an RFC pull
> > > because there has not yet been a -next build for April 16th.  If you
> > > would prefer to wait until after -next has pulled this, please let me
> > > know and I will redo this pull request after that has happened.
> > > 
> > > In the meantime, this change is available in the git repository at:
> > > 
> > >   git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/paulmck/linux-rcu.git for-mingo
> > > 
> > > for you to fetch changes up to 8d7dc9283f399e1fda4e48a1c453f689326d9396:
> > > 
> > >   rcu: Control grace-period delays directly from value (2015-04-14 19:33:59 -0700)
> > > 
> > > ----------------------------------------------------------------
> > > Paul E. McKenney (1):
> > >       rcu: Control grace-period delays directly from value
> > > 
> > >  kernel/rcu/tree.c | 16 +++++++++-------
> > >  lib/Kconfig.debug |  1 +
> > >  2 files changed, 10 insertions(+), 7 deletions(-)
> > 
> > Pulled, thanks a lot Paul!
> > 
> > Note, while this fixes Linus's immediate complaint that arose from the 
> > new option, I still think we need to do more fixes in this area.
> 
> Good point!
> 
> > To demonstrate the current situation I tried the following experiment, 
> > I did a 'make defconfig' on an x86 box and then took the .config and 
> > deleted all 'RCU Subsystem' options not marked as debugging.
> > 
> > Then I did a 'make oldconfig' to see what kinds of questions a user is 
> > facing when trying to configure RCU:
> > 
> > 	*
> > 	* Restart config...
> > 	*
> > 	*
> > 	* RCU Subsystem
> > 	*
> > 	RCU Implementation
> > 	> 1. Tree-based hierarchical RCU (TREE_RCU) (NEW)
> > 	choice[1]: 1
> 
> Hmmm...  Given that there is no choice, I agree that it is a bit silly
> to ask...

To clarify: this doesn't actually ask - it gets skipped by the kconfig 
tool. All the rest is an interactive prompt.

> > 	Task_based RCU implementation using voluntary context switch (TASKS_RCU) [N/y/?] (NEW) 
> 
> Agreed, this one should be driven directly off of CONFIG_RCU_TORTURE_TEST
> and the tracing use case.

Yeah.

> > 	Consider userspace as in RCU extended quiescent state (RCU_USER_QS) [N/y/?] (NEW) 
> 
> This should be driven directly off of CONFIG_NO_HZ_FULL, unless 
> Frederic knows something I don't.

Yes.

> > 	Tree-based hierarchical RCU fanout value (RCU_FANOUT) [64] (NEW) 
> 
> Hmmm...  I could drop/obscure this one in favor of a boot parameter.

Well, what I think might be even bette to make it scale based on 
CONFIG_NR_CPUS. Distros already actively manage the 'maximum number of 
CPUs we support', so relying on that value makes sense.

So if someone sets CONFIG_NR_CPUS to 1024, it gets scaled accordingly. 
If CONFIG_NR_CPUS is set to 2, it gets scaled to a minimal config. 
Note that this would excercise and test the affected codepaths better 
as well, as we'd get different size setups.

As for the boot option to override it: what would be the usecase for 
that?

> > 	Tree-based hierarchical RCU leaf-level fanout value (RCU_FANOUT_LEAF) [16] (NEW) 
> 
> Ditto -- though large configurations really do set this to 64 in 
> combination with the skew_tick boot parameter.  Maybe we need to 
> drive these off of some large-system parameter, like CONFIG_MAX_SMP.

Or rather CONFIG_NR_CPUS. CONFIG_MAX_SMP is really a debugging thing, 
to configure the system to the silliest high settings that doesn't 
outright crash - but it doesn't make much sense otherwise.

> > 	Disable tree-based hierarchical RCU auto-balancing (RCU_FANOUT_EXACT) [N/y/?] (NEW) 
> 
> I should just make this a boot parameter.  Absolutely no reason for 
> it to be a Kconfig parameter.

Again I'd size this to NR_CPUS - and for the boot parameter, I'd think 
about actual usecases.

> > 	Accelerate last non-dyntick-idle CPU's grace periods (RCU_FAST_NO_HZ) [N/y/?] (NEW) 
> 
> On this one, I have no idea.  Its purpose is energy efficiency, but 
> it does have some downsides, for example, increasing idle entry/exit 
> latency. I am a bit nervous about having it be a boot parameter 
> because that would leave an extra compare-branch in the path.  This 
> one will require some thought.

Keeping this one configurable, with a good default and a good 
explanation makes sense. There's a lot of 

> > 	Real-time priority to use for RCU worker threads (RCU_KTHREAD_PRIO) [0] (NEW) 
> 
> Indeed, Linus complained about this one.  ;-)

:-) Yes, it's an essentially unanswerable question.

> This Kconfig parameter is a stopgap, and needs a real solution.  
> People with crazy-heavy workloads involving realtime cannot live 
> without it, but that means that most people don't have to care.  I 
> have had solving this on my list, and this clearly increases its 
> priority.

So what value do they use, prio 99? 98? It might be better to offer 
this option as a binary choice, and set a given priority. If -rt 
people complain then they might help us in solving it properly.

> > 	Offload RCU callback processing from boot-selected CPUs (RCU_NOCB_CPU) [N/y/?] (NEW) 
> 
> Hmmm...  Maybe a boot parameter, but I thought that there was some 
> reason that this was problematic.  I will have to take another look.
> 
> Anyway, this one is important to non-NO_HZ_FULL real-time workloads. 
> In a -rt kernel, making CONFIG_PREEMPT_RT (or whatever it is these 
> days) drive this one makes a lot of sense.

Ok.

> 
> > 	#
> > 	# configuration written to .config
> > 	#
> > 
> > Only TREE_RCU is available on defconfig, so all the other options 
> > marked with '(NEW)' were offered as an interactive prompt.
> > 
> > I don't think that any of the 8 interactive options (!) here are 
> > particularly useful to even advanced users who configure kernels, and 
> > I don't think they should be offered under non-expert settings.
> 
> Would it make sense to have a CONFIG_RCU_EXPERT setting to hide the 
> remaining settings?  That would reduce the common-case number of 
> questions to one, which would be a quick and safe improvement. 
> Especially when combined with the changes I called out above.

Yes, that's absolutely sensible - although I'd also do the 
CONFIG_NR_CPUS based auto-scaling if it's not set, to make sure 
distros don't end up tuning this (inevitably imperfectly) which won't 
flow back upstream:

That's the other main problem with widely tunable, numeric settings, 
beyond their user hostility: if they are wrong and are corrected in a 
distro they don't flow back to upstream, so they are dead end 
mechanisms as far as code quality and good defaults are concerned.

Thanks,

	Ingo
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