Re: [PATCH] nohz_full: Make sched_should_stop_tick() more conservative

[Rik van Riel]

On Fri, 2016-04-01 at 15:42 -0400, Chris Metcalf wrote:
> On arm64, when calling enqueue_task_fair() from migration_cpu_stop(),
> we find the nr_running value updated by add_nr_running(), but the
> cfs.nr_running value has not always yet been updated.ÂÂAccordingly,
> the sched_can_stop_tick() false returns true when we are migrating a
> second task onto a core.

I don't get it.

Looking at the enqueue_task_fair(), I see this:

    for_each_sched_entity(se) {
ÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂcfs_rq = cfs_rq_of(se);
ÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂcfs_rq->h_nr_running++;
		...
	}

    if (!se)
ÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂadd_nr_running(rq, 1);

What is the difference between cfs_rq->h_nr_running,
and rq->cfs.nr_running?

Why do we have two?

Are we simply testing against the wrong one in
sched_can_stop_tick?

> Correct this by using rq->nr_running instead of rq->cfs.nr_running.
> This should always be more conservative, and reverts the test to the
> form it had before commit 76d92ac305f2 ("sched: Migrate sched to use
> new tick dependency mask model").

That would cause us to run the timer tick while running
a single SCHED_RR real time task, with a single
SCHED_OTHER task sitting in the background (which will
not get run until the SCHED_RR task is done).

I don't think that is the quite behaviour we want.

> Signed-off-by: Chris Metcalf <cmetcalf@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> ---
> I found this bug because I had a program running in nohz_full
> on a core, and from a different core I called sched_setaffinity()
> to force that task onto the nohz_full core, but I did not end up with
> a kick to the nohz_full core, so tick-based scheduling did not start.
> This is probably bad enough that we should fix it for 4.6.
> 
> Strangely, for some reason, the existing code worked correctly for me
> for tilegx, but not for arm64.ÂÂI see that the enqueue_task_fair()
> code calls enqueue_entity(), which calls account_entity_enqueue() to
> adjust cfs.nr_running.ÂÂThat seemed to happen on tilegx, but not
> arm64.
> Perhaps there is some difference in how the sched_entity stuff is
> done,
> but frankly that took me a little deeper into the CFS stuff than I
> was
> willing to dive in this moment.
> 
> I could also argue that sched/core.c shouldn't have a lot of CFS
> stuff in it anyway, and if we view the FIFO/RR stuff as handling the
> real special cases in sched_can_stop_tick() anyway, then just
> checking
> the core nr_running feels like the right thing to do regardless.
> 
> Âkernel/sched/core.c | 2 +-
> Â1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)
> 
> diff --git a/kernel/sched/core.c b/kernel/sched/core.c
> index 00649f7ad567..1737d63c65fa 100644
> --- a/kernel/sched/core.c
> +++ b/kernel/sched/core.c
> @@ -599,7 +599,7 @@ bool sched_can_stop_tick(struct rq *rq)
> Â	}
> Â
> Â	/* Normal multitasking need periodic preemption checks */
> -	if (rq->cfs.nr_running > 1)
> +	if (rq->nr_running > 1)
> Â		return false;
> Â
> Â	return true;
-- 
All Rights Reversed.

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