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From: Paul Durrant <xadimgnik@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <80f8ea7b-f767-4760-8a6e-b260da637903@xen.org>
Date: Fri, 24 May 2024 15:25:31 +0100
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Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH v3 21/21] sched/cputime: Cope with steal time going
 backwards or negative
To: David Woodhouse <dwmw2@infradead.org>, kvm@vger.kernel.org
Cc: Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@redhat.com>, Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>,
 Sean Christopherson <seanjc@google.com>, Thomas Gleixner
 <tglx@linutronix.de>, Ingo Molnar <mingo@redhat.com>,
 Borislav Petkov <bp@alien8.de>, Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@linux.intel.com>,
 x86@kernel.org, "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com>,
 Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>, Juri Lelli <juri.lelli@redhat.com>,
 Vincent Guittot <vincent.guittot@linaro.org>,
 Dietmar Eggemann <dietmar.eggemann@arm.com>,
 Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org>, Ben Segall <bsegall@google.com>,
 Mel Gorman <mgorman@suse.de>, Daniel Bristot de Oliveira
 <bristot@redhat.com>, Valentin Schneider <vschneid@redhat.com>,
 Shuah Khan <shuah@kernel.org>, linux-doc@vger.kernel.org,
 linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, jalliste@amazon.co.uk, sveith@amazon.de,
 zide.chen@intel.com, Dongli Zhang <dongli.zhang@oracle.com>,
 Chenyi Qiang <chenyi.qiang@intel.com>
References: <20240522001817.619072-1-dwmw2@infradead.org>
 <20240522001817.619072-22-dwmw2@infradead.org>
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On 22/05/2024 01:17, David Woodhouse wrote:
> From: David Woodhouse <dwmw@amazon.co.uk>
> 
> In steal_account_process_time(), a delta is calculated between the value
> returned by paravirt_steal_clock(), and this_rq()->prev_steal_time which
> is assumed to be the *previous* value returned by paravirt_steal_clock().
> 
> However, instead of just assigning the newly-read value directly into
> ->prev_steal_time for use in the next iteration, ->prev_steal_time is
> *incremented* by the calculated delta.
> 
> This used to be roughly the same, modulo conversion to jiffies and back,
> until commit 807e5b80687c0 ("sched/cputime: Add steal time support to
> full dynticks CPU time accounting") started clamping that delta to a
> maximum of the actual time elapsed. So now, if the value returned by
> paravirt_steal_clock() jumps by a large amount, instead of a *single*
> period of reporting 100% steal time, the system will report 100% steal
> time for as long as it takes to "catch up" with the reported value.
> Which is up to 584 years.
> 
> But there is a benefit to advancing ->prev_steal_time only by the time
> which was *accounted* as having been stolen. It means that any extra
> time truncated by the clamping will be accounted in the next sample
> period rather than lost. Given the stochastic nature of the sampling,
> that is more accurate overall.
> 
> So, continue to advance ->prev_steal_time by the accounted value as
> long as the delta isn't egregiously large (for which, use maxtime * 2).
> If the delta is more than that, just set ->prev_steal_time directly to
> the value returned by paravirt_steal_clock().
> 
> Fixes: 807e5b80687c0 ("sched/cputime: Add steal time support to full dynticks CPU time accounting")
> Signed-off-by: David Woodhouse <dwmw@amazon.co.uk>
> ---
>   kernel/sched/cputime.c | 20 ++++++++++++++------
>   1 file changed, 14 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-)
> 

Reviewed-by: Paul Durrant <paul@xen.org>