ksoftirqd: Enable IRQs and call cond_resched() before poking RCU
authorCalvin Owens <calvinowens@fb.com>
Tue, 13 Jan 2015 21:16:18 +0000 (13:16 -0800)
committerPaul E. McKenney <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Wed, 14 Jan 2015 21:18:58 +0000 (13:18 -0800)
While debugging an issue with excessive softirq usage, I encountered the
following note in commit 3e339b5dae24a706 ("softirq: Use hotplug thread
infrastructure"):

    [ paulmck: Call rcu_note_context_switch() with interrupts enabled. ]

...but despite this note, the patch still calls RCU with IRQs disabled.

This seemingly innocuous change caused a significant regression in softirq
CPU usage on the sending side of a large TCP transfer (~1 GB/s): when
introducing 0.01% packet loss, the softirq usage would jump to around 25%,
spiking as high as 50%. Before the change, the usage would never exceed 5%.

Moving the call to rcu_note_context_switch() after the cond_sched() call,
as it was originally before the hotplug patch, completely eliminated this
problem.

Signed-off-by: Calvin Owens <calvinowens@fb.com>
Cc: stable@vger.kernel.org
Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
kernel/softirq.c

index 501baa9..c497fcd 100644 (file)
@@ -656,9 +656,13 @@ static void run_ksoftirqd(unsigned int cpu)
                 * in the task stack here.
                 */
                __do_softirq();
-               rcu_note_context_switch();
                local_irq_enable();
                cond_resched();
+
+               preempt_disable();
+               rcu_note_context_switch();
+               preempt_enable();
+
                return;
        }
        local_irq_enable();