Re: WARNING: possible circular locking dependency detected

[Peter Zijlstra]

On Thu, Aug 31, 2017 at 09:08:05AM +0200, Thomas Gleixner wrote:
> On Wed, 30 Aug 2017, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> > On offline it basically does perf_event_disable() for all CPU context
> > events, and then adds HOTPLUG_OFFSET (-32) to arrive at: OFF +
> > HOTPLUG_OFFSET = -33.
> > 
> > That's smaller than ERROR and thus perf_event_enable() no-ops on events
> > for offline CPUs (maybe we should try and plumb an error return for
> > IOC_ENABLE).
> > 
> > On online we subtract the HOTPLUG_OFFSET again and the event becomes a
> > regular OFF, after which perf_event_enable() should work again.
> 
> I haven't come around to test that as I was busy cleaning up the unholy
> mess in the watchdog code.
> 
> One other thing I stumbled over is:
> 
>     perf_event_create()
>       ....
>       x86_hw_reserve(event)
> 
>       if (__x86_pmu_event_init(event) < 0)
>       	    event->destroy(event);
> 	    	x86_hw_release()
> 		    ....
> 		    cpus_read_lock();
> 
> If that happens from a hotplug function, we are doomed.
> 
> I mean, that particular watchdog event won't fail if the watchdog code
> would verify that already at init time (which it does soon), but in general
> event creation during hotplug is dangerous.

Arghh!!!

And allowing us to create events for offline CPUs (possible I think, but
maybe slightly tricky) won't solve that, because we're already holding
the hotplug_lock during PREPARE.

I'll try and think...