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From:   Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
To:     Marco Elver <elver@google.com>
Cc:     Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>,
        LKML <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
        kasan-dev <kasan-dev@googlegroups.com>,
        "Paul E. McKenney" <paulmck@kernel.org>,
        Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org>,
        Frederic Weisbecker <frederic@kernel.org>,
        Will Deacon <will@kernel.org>,
        Naresh Kamboju <naresh.kamboju@linaro.org>,
        syzbot+23a256029191772c2f02@syzkaller.appspotmail.com,
        syzbot+56078ac0b9071335a745@syzkaller.appspotmail.com,
        syzbot+867130cb240c41f15164@syzkaller.appspotmail.com
Subject: Re: [patch 3/3] tick: Annotate tick_do_timer_cpu data races
In-Reply-To: <CANpmjNNQiTbnkkj+ZHS5xxQuQfnWN_JGwSnN-_xqfa=raVrXHQ@mail.gmail.com>
References: <20201206211253.919834182@linutronix.de> <20201206212002.876987748@linutronix.de> <20201207120943.GS3021@hirez.programming.kicks-ass.net> <87y2i94igo.fsf@nanos.tec.linutronix.de> <CANpmjNNQiTbnkkj+ZHS5xxQuQfnWN_JGwSnN-_xqfa=raVrXHQ@mail.gmail.com>
Date:   Mon, 07 Dec 2020 20:43:21 +0100
Message-ID: <87eek14d2e.fsf@nanos.tec.linutronix.de>
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On Mon, Dec 07 2020 at 19:19, Marco Elver wrote:
> On Mon, 7 Dec 2020 at 18:46, Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de> wrote:
>> On Mon, Dec 07 2020 at 13:09, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
>> > I prefer the form:
>> >
>> >       if (data_race(tick_do_timer_cpu == TICK_DO_TIMER_BOOT)) {
>> >
>> > But there doesn't yet seem to be sufficient data_race() usage in the
>> > kernel to see which of the forms is preferred. Do we want to bike-shed
>> > this now and document the outcome somewhere?
>>
>> Yes please before we get a gazillion of patches changing half of them
>> half a year from now.
>
> That rule should be as simple as possible. The simplest would be:
> "Only enclose the smallest required expression in data_race(); keep
> the number of required data_race() expressions to a minimum." (=> want
> least amount of code inside data_race() with the least number of
> data_race()s).
>
> In the case here, that'd be the "if (data_race(tick_do_timer_cpu) ==
> ..." variant.
>
> Otherwise there's the possibility that we'll end up with accesses
> inside data_race() that we hadn't planned for. For example, somebody
> refactors some code replacing constants with variables.
>
> I currently don't know what the rule for Peter's preferred variant
> would be, without running the risk of some accidentally data_race()'d
> accesses.

I agree. Lets keep it simple and have the data_race() only covering the
actual access to the racy variable, struct member.

The worst case we could end up with would be

    if (data_race(A) == data_race(B))

which would still be clearly isolated. The racy part is not the
comparison, it's the accesses which can cause random results for the
comparison.

Thanks,

        tglx