Re: [Query] Preemption (hogging) of the work handler

[Sergey Senozhatsky]

Hello,

On (07/13/16 08:39), Viresh Kumar wrote:
[..]
> Maybe not, as this can still lead to the original bug we were all
> chasing. This may hog some other CPU if we are doing excessive
> printing in suspend :(

excessive printing is just part of the problem here. if we cab cond_resched()
in console_unlock() (IOW, we execute console_unlock() with preemption and
interrupts enabled) then everything must be ok, and *from printing POV* there
is no difference whether it's printk_kthread or anything else in this case.
the difference jumps in when original console_unlock() is executed with
preemption/irq disabled, then offloading it to schedulable printk_kthread is
the right thing.

> suspend_console() is called quite early, so for example in my case we
> do lots of printing during suspend (not from the suspend thread, but
> an IRQ handled by the USB subsystem, which removes a bus with help of
> some other thread probably).

a silly question -- can we suspend consoles later?

part of suspend/hibernation is cpu_down(), which lands in console_cpu_notify(),
that does synchronous printing for every CPU taken down:

static int console_cpu_notify(struct notifier_block *self,
	unsigned long action, void *hcpu)
{
	switch (action) {
	case CPU_ONLINE:
	case CPU_DEAD:
	case CPU_DOWN_FAILED:
	case CPU_UP_CANCELED:
		console_lock();
		console_unlock();
		^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
	}
	return NOTIFY_OK;
}

console_unlock() is synchronous (I posted a very early draft patch that makes
it asynchronous, but that's a future work). so if there is a ton of printk()-s,
then console_unlock() will print it, 100% guaranteed. even if printk_kthread
is doing the printing job at the moment, cpu down path will wait for it to
stop, lock the console semaphore, and got to console_unlock() printing loop.

in printk that you have posted, that will happen not only for CPU_DEAD,
but for CPU_DYING as well (possibly, there is a /* invoked with preemption
disabled, so defer */ comment, so may be you never endup doing direct
printk there, but then you schedule a console_unlock() work).

> That is why my Hacky patch tried to do it after devices are removed
> and irqs are disabled, but before syscore users are suspended (and
> timekeeping is one of them). And so it fixes it for me completely.
> 
> IOW, we should switch back to synchronous printing after disabling
> interrupts on the last running CPU.
> 
> And I of course agree with Rafael that we would need something similar
> in Hibernation code path as well, if we choose to fix it my way.

suspend/hibernation/kexec - all covered by this patch.

	-ss