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Subject: Re: [PATCH -tip 03/32] sched/fair: Fix pick_task_fair crashes due to
 empty rbtree
To:     "Joel Fernandes (Google)" <joel@joelfernandes.org>,
        Nishanth Aravamudan <naravamudan@digitalocean.com>,
        Julien Desfossez <jdesfossez@digitalocean.com>,
        Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>,
        Tim Chen <tim.c.chen@linux.intel.com>,
        Vineeth Pillai <viremana@linux.microsoft.com>,
        Aaron Lu <aaron.lwe@gmail.com>,
        Aubrey Li <aubrey.intel@gmail.com>, tglx@linutronix.de,
        linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Cc:     mingo@kernel.org, torvalds@linux-foundation.org,
        fweisbec@gmail.com, keescook@chromium.org, kerrnel@google.com,
        Phil Auld <pauld@redhat.com>,
        Valentin Schneider <valentin.schneider@arm.com>,
        Mel Gorman <mgorman@techsingularity.net>,
        Pawan Gupta <pawan.kumar.gupta@linux.intel.com>,
        Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@redhat.com>, vineeth@bitbyteword.org,
        Chen Yu <yu.c.chen@intel.com>,
        Christian Brauner <christian.brauner@ubuntu.com>,
        Agata Gruza <agata.gruza@intel.com>,
        Antonio Gomez Iglesias <antonio.gomez.iglesias@intel.com>,
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        Dhaval Giani <dhaval.giani@oracle.com>,
        Junaid Shahid <junaids@google.com>, jsbarnes@google.com,
        chris.hyser@oracle.com, Ben Segall <bsegall@google.com>,
        Josh Don <joshdon@google.com>, Hao Luo <haoluo@google.com>,
        Tom Lendacky <thomas.lendacky@amd.com>,
        Aubrey Li <aubrey.li@linux.intel.com>,
        "Paul E. McKenney" <paulmck@kernel.org>,
        Tim Chen <tim.c.chen@intel.com>
References: <20201117232003.3580179-1-joel@joelfernandes.org>
 <20201117232003.3580179-4-joel@joelfernandes.org>
From:   "Singh, Balbir" <bsingharora@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <cab6918c-7b52-923c-4274-f92e9f0a5cd2@gmail.com>
Date:   Fri, 20 Nov 2020 21:15:28 +1100
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On 18/11/20 10:19 am, Joel Fernandes (Google) wrote:
> From: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
> 
> pick_next_entity() is passed curr == NULL during core-scheduling. Due to
> this, if the rbtree is empty, the 'left' variable is set to NULL within
> the function. This can cause crashes within the function.
> 
> This is not an issue if put_prev_task() is invoked on the currently
> running task before calling pick_next_entity(). However, in core
> scheduling, it is possible that a sibling CPU picks for another RQ in
> the core, via pick_task_fair(). This remote sibling would not get any
> opportunities to do a put_prev_task().
> 
> Fix it by refactoring pick_task_fair() such that pick_next_entity() is
> called with the cfs_rq->curr. This will prevent pick_next_entity() from
> crashing if its rbtree is empty.
> 
> Also this fixes another possible bug where update_curr() would not be
> called on the cfs_rq hierarchy if the rbtree is empty. This could effect
> cross-cpu comparison of vruntime.
> 

It is not clear from the changelog as to what does put_prev_task() do to prevent
the crash from occuring? Why did we pass NULL as curr in the first place to
pick_next_entity?

The patch looks functionally correct as in, it passes curr as the reference
to pick_next_entity() for left and entity_before comparisons.

Balbir Singh