Re: [RFC PATCH] workqueue: Unbind workers before sending them to exit()

[Valentin Schneider]

On 27/07/22 16:55, Lai Jiangshan wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 27, 2022 at 2:30 PM Lai Jiangshan <jiangshanlai@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>> >
>> > >
>> > > What hasn't changed much between my attempts is transferring to-be-destroyed
>> > > kworkers from their pool->idle_list to a reaper_list which is walked by
>> > > *something* that does unbind+wakeup. AFAIA as long as the kworker is off
>> > > the pool->idle_list we can play with it (i.e. unbind+wake) off the
>> > > pool->lock.
>> > >
>> > > It's the *something* that's annoying to get right, I don't want it to be
>> > > overly complicated given most users are probably not impacted by what I'm
>> > > trying to fix, but I'm getting the feeling it should still be a per-pool
>> > > kthread. I toyed with a single reaper kthread but a central synchronization
>> > > for all the pools feels like a stupid overhead.
>> >
>> > I think fixing it in the workqueue.c is complicated.
>> >
>> > Nevertheless, I will also try to fix it inside workqueue only to see
>> > what will come up.
>>
>> I'm going to kind of revert 3347fc9f36e7 ("workqueue: destroy worker
>> directly in the idle timeout handler"), so that we can have a sleepable
>> destroy_worker().
>>
>
> It is not a good idea.  The woken up manager might still be in
> the isolated CPU.
>
> On Wed, Jul 27, 2022 at 6:59 AM Tejun Heo <tj@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>
>> I mean, whatever works works but let's please keep it as minimal as
>> possible. Why does it need dedicated kthreads in the first place? Wouldn't
>> scheduling an unbound work item work just as well?
>>
>
> Scheduling an unbound work item will work well.

I did play a bit with that yesterday (pretty much replacing the
pool->idle_timer with a delayed_work) but locking discouraged me - it's
quite easy to end up with a self-deadlock.

Now, I've slept over it and have a fresh cup of coffee, and it's been the
least intrusive-looking change I've tried, so let me give that a shot
again.