Re: [PATCH net] tcp: Add READ_ONCE() to read tcp_orphan_count

[Paul E. McKenney]

On Thu, May 12, 2022 at 02:31:48PM -0700, Eric Dumazet wrote:
> On Thu, May 12, 2022 at 2:18 PM Marco Elver <elver@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> >
> > I guess the question is, is it the norm that per_cpu() retrieves data
> > that can legally be modified concurrently, or not. If not, and in most
> > cases it's a bug, the annotations should be here.
> >
> > Paul, was there any guidance/documentation on this, but I fail to find
> > it right now? (access-marking.txt doesn't say much about per-CPU
> > data.)
> 
> Normally, whenever we add a READ_ONCE(), we are supposed to add a comment.

I am starting to think that comments are even more necessary for unmarked
accesses to shared variables, with the comments setting out why the
compiler cannot mess things up.  ;-)

> We could make an exception for per_cpu_once(), because the comment
> would be centralized
> at per_cpu_once() definition.

This makes a lot of sense to me.

> We will be stuck with READ_ONCE() in places we are using
> per_cpu_ptr(), for example
> in dev_fetch_sw_netstats()

If this is strictly statistics, data_race() is another possibility.
But it does not constrain the compiler at all.

							Thanx, Paul

> diff --git a/net/core/dev.c b/net/core/dev.c
> index 1461c2d9dec8099a9a2d43a704b4c6cb0375f480..b66470291d7b7e6c33161093d71e40587f9ed838
> 100644
> --- a/net/core/dev.c
> +++ b/net/core/dev.c
> @@ -10381,10 +10381,13 @@ void dev_fetch_sw_netstats(struct
> rtnl_link_stats64 *s,
>                 stats = per_cpu_ptr(netstats, cpu);
>                 do {
>                         start = u64_stats_fetch_begin_irq(&stats->syncp);
> -                       tmp.rx_packets = stats->rx_packets;
> -                       tmp.rx_bytes   = stats->rx_bytes;
> -                       tmp.tx_packets = stats->tx_packets;
> -                       tmp.tx_bytes   = stats->tx_bytes;
> +                       /* These values can change under us.
> +                        * READ_ONCE() pair with too many write sides...
> +                        */
> +                       tmp.rx_packets = READ_ONCE(stats->rx_packets);
> +                       tmp.rx_bytes   = READ_ONCE(stats->rx_bytes);
> +                       tmp.tx_packets = READ_ONCE(stats->tx_packets);
> +                       tmp.tx_bytes   = READ_ONCE(stats->tx_bytes);
>                 } while (u64_stats_fetch_retry_irq(&stats->syncp, start));
> 
>                 s->rx_packets += tmp.rx_packets;