We have been observing hangs, both of KVM guest vcpu tasks and more
generally, where a process that is woken doesn't properly wake up and
continue to run, but instead sticks in TASK_WAKING state. This
happens because the update of rq->wake_list in ttwu_queue_remote()
is not ordered with the update of ipi_message in
smp_muxed_ipi_message_pass(), and the reading of rq->wake_list in
scheduler_ipi() is not ordered with the reading of ipi_message in
smp_ipi_demux(). Thus it is possible for the IPI receiver not to see
the updated rq->wake_list and therefore conclude that there is nothing
for it to do.
In order to make sure that anything done before smp_send_reschedule()
is ordered before anything done in the resulting call to scheduler_ipi(),
this adds barriers in smp_muxed_message_pass() and smp_ipi_demux().
The barrier in smp_muxed_message_pass() is a full barrier to ensure that
there is a full ordering between the smp_send_reschedule() caller and
scheduler_ipi(). In smp_ipi_demux(), we use xchg() rather than
xchg_local() because xchg() includes release and acquire barriers.
Using xchg() rather than xchg_local() makes sense given that
ipi_message is not just accessed locally.
This moves the barrier between setting the message and calling the
cause_ipi() function into the individual cause_ipi implementations.
Most of them -- those that used outb, out_8 or similar -- already had
a full barrier because out_8 etc. include a sync before the MMIO
store. This adds an explicit barrier in the two remaining cases.
These changes made no measurable difference to the speed of IPIs as
measured using a simple ping-pong latency test across two CPUs on
different cores of a POWER7 machine.
The analysis of the reason why processes were not waking up properly
is due to Milton Miller.
Cc: stable@vger.kernel.org # v3.0+
Reported-by: Milton Miller <miltonm@bga.com>
Signed-off-by: Paul Mackerras <paulus@samba.org>
Signed-off-by: Benjamin Herrenschmidt <benh@kernel.crashing.org>
9fb1b36ca1