On Fri, Feb 09, 2018 at 08:06:49AM +0100, Ingo Molnar wrote:
>
> * Frederic Weisbecker <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > Update the documentation to reflect the 1Hz tick offload changes.
> >
> > Signed-off-by: Frederic Weisbecker <[email protected]>
> > Cc: Chris Metcalf <[email protected]>
> > Cc: Christoph Lameter <[email protected]>
> > Cc: Luiz Capitulino <[email protected]>
> > Cc: Mike Galbraith <[email protected]>
> > Cc: Paul E. McKenney <[email protected]>
> > Cc: Peter Zijlstra <[email protected]>
> > Cc: Rik van Riel <[email protected]>
> > Cc: Thomas Gleixner <[email protected]>
> > Cc: Wanpeng Li <[email protected]>
> > Cc: Ingo Molnar <[email protected]>
> > ---
> > Documentation/admin-guide/kernel-parameters.txt | 6 +++++-
> > 1 file changed, 5 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
> >
> > diff --git a/Documentation/admin-guide/kernel-parameters.txt
> > b/Documentation/admin-guide/kernel-parameters.txt
> > index 39ac9d4..c851e41 100644
> > --- a/Documentation/admin-guide/kernel-parameters.txt
> > +++ b/Documentation/admin-guide/kernel-parameters.txt
> > @@ -1762,7 +1762,11 @@
> > specified in the flag list (default: domain):
> >
> > nohz
> > - Disable the tick when a single task runs.
> > + Disable the tick when a single task runs. A residual
> > 1Hz
> > + tick is offloaded to workqueues that you need to
> > affine
> > + to housekeeping through the sysfs file
> > + /sys/devices/virtual/workqueue/cpumask or using the
> > below
> > + domain flag.
>
> This is pretty ambiguous and somewhat confusing, I'd suggest something like:
>
> nohz
> Disable the tick when a single task runs.
>
> A residual 1Hz tick is offloaded to workqueues, which
> you
> need to affine to housekeeping through the global
> workqueue's affinity configured via the
> /sys/devices/virtual/workqueue/cpumask sysfs file, or
> by using the 'domain' flag described below.
>
> NOTE: by default the global workqueue runs on all
> CPUs,
> so to protect individual CPUs the 'cpumask' file has
> to
> be configured manually after bootup.
>
> Assuming what I wrote is correct - the CPU isolation config space is pretty
> confusing all around and should be made a lot more human friendly ...
That's right. In fact "nohz_full=" affines the workqueues and it involves much
more: unbound timers affinity, RCU threads, etc...
So "nohz_full=" is the friendly interface as it does all in one.
Now the use of "isolcpus=" is supposed to be more finegrained and allow for
more control.
Ideally I would like to have an "unbound" flag which affines all these unbound
works. And
why not a "per_cpu" flag to disable or offload per cpu work such as watchdog.
So we would only need to do:
isolcpus=nohz,unbound,per_cpu
Or even just:
isolcpus=all
But before extending further isolcpus=, I would like to make sure I can make it
mutable
later through cpusets. So this is work in progress.
Thanks.
