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Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2002 16:15:49 +0100 (MET)
From: Erich Focht <focht@ess.nec.de>
To: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
cc: Paul Jackson <pj@engr.sgi.com>, Robert Love <rml@tech9.net>,
        linux-kernel <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
        Matthew Dobson <colpatch@us.ibm.com>,
        lse-tech <lse-tech@lists.sourceforge.net>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] O(1) scheduler set_cpus_allowed for non-current tasks
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Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0202211608500.12765-100000@sx6.ess.nec.de>
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Ingo,

thanks for the patch, I am glad to have an "official" solution! Though
I'll wait for your 2.4.X patch to give it a try on Itanium SMP
systems. But this lazy migration scheme looks nice and safe.

Best regards,
Erich


On Thu, 21 Feb 2002, Ingo Molnar wrote:

> 
> On Thu, 21 Feb 2002, Erich Focht wrote:
> 
> > well I whished this kind of feedback came at my first attempt to have
> > a discussion on this subject. Would have saved me lots of reboots :-)
> 
> i did not find out about the most fundamental problem until today, when i
> tried to merge your patch. Much of Linux's development is trial & err, i
> do that all the time as well.
> 
> > The reaction those days was:
> >
> > Ingo> your patch does not solve the problem, the situation is more
> > Ingo> complex. What happens if the target task is not 'current' and is
> > Ingo> running on some other CPU? If we send the migration interrupt then
> > Ingo> nothing guarantees that the task will reschedule anytime soon, so
> > Ingo> the target CPU will keep spinning indefinitely. There are other
> > Ingo> problems too, like crossing calls to set_cpus_allowed(), etc. Right
> > Ingo> now set_cpus_allowed() can only be used for
> > Ingo> the current task, and must be used by kernel code that knows what it
> > Ingo> does.
> >
> > and later:
> >
> > Ingo> well, there is a way, by fixing the current mechanizm. But since
> > Ingo> nothing uses it currently it wont get much testing. I only pointed
> > Ingo> out that the patch does not solve some of the races.
> >
> > So I kept Ingo's design idea of sending IPIs. And I made it survive
> > crossing calls and avoid spinning around for long time, specially in
> > interrupt.
> 
> the fundamental problem is with wait_task_inactive() called from IRQ
> contexts - it can spin indefinitely. The above comments list some of the
> other problems, and those can indeed be solved by extending the IPI
> delivery mechanism, which you did.
> 
> migration threads are a variation of the current scheduler as well -the
> schedule()/wakeup() hotpath did not have to be touched.
> 
> 	Ingo

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