Re: static_branch_enable() does not work from a __init function?

From: Peter Zijlstra
Date: Wed Dec 16 2020 - 07:48:00 EST


On Wed, Dec 16, 2020 at 12:55:25PM +0100, Jessica Yu wrote:
> +++ Peter Zijlstra [16/12/20 10:26 +0100]:
> [snip]
> > > PS, I originally found: in arch/x86/kvm/vmx/vmx.c: vmx_init(), it looks
> > > like the line "static_branch_enable(&enable_evmcs);" does not take effect
> > > in a v5.4-based kernel, but does take effect in the v5.10 kernel in the
> > > same x86-64 virtual machine on Hyper-V, so I made the above test module
> > > to test static_branch_enable(), and found that static_branch_enable() in
> > > the test module does not work with both v5.10 and my v5.4 kernel, if the
> > > __init marker is used.
>
> Because the jump label code currently does not allow you to update if
> the entry resides in an init section. By marking the module init
> section __init you place it in the .init.text section.
> jump_label_add_module() detects this (by calling within_module_init())
> and marks the entry by calling jump_entry_set_init(). Then you have
> the following sequence of calls (roughly):
>
> static_branch_enable
> static_key_enable
> static_key_enable_cpuslocked
> jump_label_update
> jump_label_can_update
> jump_entry_is_init returns true, so bail out
>
> Judging from the comment in jump_label_can_update(), this seems to be
> intentional behavior:
>
> static bool jump_label_can_update(struct jump_entry *entry, bool init)
> {
> /*
> * Cannot update code that was in an init text area.
> */
> if (!init && jump_entry_is_init(entry))
> return false;
>

Only because we're having .init=false, incorrectly. See the other email.