Re: [for-next][PATCH 4/4] ftrace: Add comment to why rcu_dereference_sched() is open coded

[Steven Rostedt]

On Wed, 5 Feb 2020 09:19:15 -0500
Joel Fernandes <joel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Could you paste the stack here when RCU is not watching? In trace event code
> IIRC we call rcu_enter_irqs_on() to have RCU temporarily watch, since that
> code can be called from idle loop. Should we doing the same here as well?

Unfortunately I lost the stack trace. And the last time we tried to use
rcu_enter_irqs_on() for ftrace, we couldn't find a way to do this
properly. Ftrace is much more invasive then going into idle. The
problem is that ftrace traces RCU itself, and calling
"rcu_enter_irqs_on()" in pretty much any place in the RCU code caused
lots of bugs ;-)

This is why we have the schedule_on_each_cpu(ftrace_sync) hack.

-- Steve