Date: Thu, 5 Jun 2008 15:29:53 -0500
From: Paul Jackson <pj@sgi.com>
To: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com>
Cc: mingo@elte.hu, peterz@infradead.org, menage@google.com,
       linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [patch] sched: prevent bound kthreads from changing
 cpus_allowed
Message-Id: <20080605152953.dcfefa47.pj@sgi.com>
In-Reply-To: <alpine.DEB.1.10.0806051255500.31157@chino.kir.corp.google.com>
References: <alpine.DEB.1.10.0806051255500.31157@chino.kir.corp.google.com>
Organization: SGI
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A couple of questions on this:

 1) Sometimes threads are bound to a set of CPUs, such as the CPUs
    on a particular node:

	drivers/pci/pci-driver.c:       set_cpus_allowed_ptr(current, nodecpumask);
	net/sunrpc/svc.c:               set_cpus_allowed_ptr(current, nodecpumask);

    Such cases can't invoke kthread_bind(), as that only binds to a single CPU.
    I only see one place in your patch that sets PF_THREAD_BOUND; would it make
    sense for such multi-CPU binds as above to be PF_THREAD_BOUND as well?

 2) Sometimes calls to kthread_bind are binding to any online cpu, such as in:

	drivers/infiniband/hw/ehca/ehca_irq.c:	kthread_bind(cct->task, any_online_cpu(cpu_online_map));

    In such cases, the PF_THREAD_BOUND seems inappropriate.  The caller of
    kthread_bind() really doesn't seem to care where that thread is bound;
    they just want it on a CPU that is still online.

-- 
                  I won't rest till it's the best ...
                  Programmer, Linux Scalability
                  Paul Jackson <pj@sgi.com> 1.940.382.4214
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