Re: timers: Move clearing of base::timer_running under base::lock

From: Thomas Gleixner
Date: Fri Dec 11 2020 - 09:47:05 EST


On Tue, Dec 08 2020 at 09:50, Sebastian Andrzej Siewior wrote:
> On 2020-12-07 08:06:48 [-0800], Paul E. McKenney wrote:
>> > Yes, but it triggers frequently. Like `rcuc' is somehow is aligned with
>> > the timeout.
>>
>> Given that a lot of RCU processing is event-driven based on timers,
>> and given that the scheduling-clock interrupts are synchronized for
>> energy-efficiency reasons on many configs, maybe this alignment is
>> expected behavior?
>
> No, it is the fact that rcu_preempt has a higher priority than
> ksoftirqd. So immediately after the wakeup (of rcu_preempt) there is a
> context switch and expire_timers() has this:
>
> | raw_spin_unlock_irq(&base->lock);
> | call_timer_fn(timer, fn, baseclk);
> | raw_spin_lock_irq(&base->lock);
> | base->running_timer = NULL;
> | timer_sync_wait_running(base);
>
> So ->running_timer isn't reset and try_to_del_timer_sync() (that
> del_timer_sync() from schedule_timeout()) returns -1 and then the corner
> case is handled where `expiry_lock' is acquired. So everything goes as
> expected.

Well, but even without that change you have the same situation:

timer_fn()
wakeup()
-->preemption
del_timer_sync()
if (running)
wait_for_running()
lock(expiry)

running = NULL
sync_wait_running()
unlock(expiry)
wakeup_lock()
-->preemption
...

lock(base)

So the change at hand does not make things worse, right?

Thanks,

tglx