On Sat, Mar 26, 2016 at 10:22:57PM +0000, Mathieu Desnoyers wrote: > ----- On Mar 26, 2016, at 2:49 PM, Paul E. McKenney > paul...@linux.vnet.ibm.com wrote: > > > On Sat, Mar 26, 2016 at 08:28:16AM -0700, Paul E. McKenney wrote: > >> On Sat, Mar 26, 2016 at 12:29:31PM +0000, Mathieu Desnoyers wrote: > >> > ----- On Mar 25, 2016, at 5:46 PM, Paul E. McKenney > >> > paul...@linux.vnet.ibm.com > >> > wrote: > >> > > >> > > On Fri, Mar 25, 2016 at 09:24:14PM +0000, Chatre, Reinette wrote: > >> > >> Hi Paul, > >> > >> > >> > >> On 2016-03-23, Paul E. McKenney wrote: > >> > >> > Please boot with the following parameters: > >> > >> > > >> > >> > rcu_tree.rcu_kick_kthreads ftrace > >> > >> > trace_event=sched_waking,sched_wakeup,sched_wake_idle_without_ipi > >> > >> > >> > >> With these parameters I expected more details to show up in the > >> > >> kernel logs but > >> > >> cannot find any. Even so, today I left the machine running again and > >> > >> when this > >> > >> happened I think I was able to capture the trace data for the event. > >> > >> Please > >> > >> find attached the trace information for the kernel message below. > >> > >> Since the > >> > >> complete trace file is very big I trimmed it to show the time around > >> > >> this event > >> > >> - hopefully this will contain the information you need. I would also > >> > >> like to > >> > >> provide some additional information. The system on which I see these > >> > >> events had > >> > >> a time that was _very_ wrong. I noticed that this issue occurs when > >> > >> system-timesynd was one of the tasks calling the functions of > >> > >> interest to your > >> > >> tracing and am wondering if a very out of sync time in process of > >> > >> being > >> > >> corrected could be the cause of this issue? As an experiment I > >> > >> ensured the > >> > >> system time was accurate before leaving the system idle overnight and > >> > >> I did not > >> > >> see the issue the next morning. > >> > > > >> > > Ah! Yes, a sudden jump in time or a disagreement about the time among > >> > > different components of the system can definitely cause these symptoms. > >> > > We have sometimes seen these problems occur when a pair of CPUs have > >> > > wildly different ideas about what time it is, for example. Please let > >> > > me know how it goes. > >> > > > >> > > Also, in your trace, there are no sched_waking events for the > >> > > rcu_preempt > >> > > process that are not immediately followed by sched_wakeup, so your > >> > > trace > >> > > isn't showing the problem that I am seeing. > >> > > >> > This is interesting. > >> > > >> > Perhaps we could try with those commits reverted ? > >> > > >> > commit e3baac47f0e82c4be632f4f97215bb93bf16b342 > >> > Author: Peter Zijlstra <pet...@infradead.org> > >> > Date: Wed Jun 4 10:31:18 2014 -0700 > >> > > >> > sched/idle: Optimize try-to-wake-up IPI > >> > > >> > commit fd99f91aa007ba255aac44fe6cf21c1db398243a > >> > Author: Peter Zijlstra <pet...@infradead.org> > >> > Date: Wed Apr 9 15:35:08 2014 +0200 > >> > > >> > sched/idle: Avoid spurious wakeup IPIs > >> > > >> > They appeared in 3.16. > >> > >> At this point, I am up for trying pretty much anything. ;-) > >> > >> Will give it a go. > > > > And those certainly don't revert cleanly! Would patching the kernel > > to remove the definition of TIF_POLLING_NRFLAG be useful? Or, more > > to the point, is there some other course of action that would be more > > useful? At this point, the test times are measured in weeks... > > Indeed, patching the kernel to remove the TIF_POLLING_NRFLAG > definition would have an effect similar to reverting those two > commits. > > Since testing takes a while, we could take a more aggressive > approach towards reproducing a possible race condition: we > could re-implement the _TIF_POLLING_NRFLAG vs _TIF_NEED_RESCHED > dance, along with the ttwu pending lock-list queue, within > a dummy test module, with custom data structures, and > stress-test the invariants. We could also create a Promela > model of these ipi-skip optimisations trying to validate > progress: whenever a wakeup is requested, there should > always be a scheduling performed, even if no further wakeup > is encountered. > > Each of the two approaches proposed above might be a significant > endeavor, and would only validate my specific hunch. So it might > be a good idea to just let a test run for a few weeks with > TIF_POLLING_NRFLAG disabled meanwhile.
This makes a lot of sense. I did some short runs, and nothing broke too badly. However, I left some diagnostic stuff in that obscured the outcome. I disabled the diagnostic stuff and am running overnight. I might need to go further and revert some of my diagnostic patches, but let's see where it is in the morning. Thanx, Paul