sched_pin() versus PCPU_GET

mdf at FreeBSD.org mdf at FreeBSD.org
Sun Aug 8 15:24:39 UTC 2010


On Sun, Aug 8, 2010 at 2:43 PM, Attilio Rao <attilio at freebsd.org> wrote:
> 2010/8/4  <mdf at freebsd.org>:
>> On Fri, Jul 30, 2010 at 2:31 PM, John Baldwin <jhb at freebsd.org> wrote:
>>> On Friday, July 30, 2010 10:08:22 am John Baldwin wrote:
>>>> On Thursday, July 29, 2010 7:39:02 pm mdf at freebsd.org wrote:
>>>> > We've seen a few instances at work where witness_warn() in ast()
>>>> > indicates the sched lock is still held, but the place it claims it was
>>>> > held by is in fact sometimes not possible to keep the lock, like:
>>>> >
>>>> >     thread_lock(td);
>>>> >     td->td_flags &= ~TDF_SELECT;
>>>> >     thread_unlock(td);
>>>> >
>>>> > What I was wondering is, even though the assembly I see in objdump -S
>>>> > for witness_warn has the increment of td_pinned before the PCPU_GET:
>>>> >
>>>> > ffffffff802db210:   65 48 8b 1c 25 00 00    mov    %gs:0x0,%rbx
>>>> > ffffffff802db217:   00 00
>>>> > ffffffff802db219:   ff 83 04 01 00 00       incl   0x104(%rbx)
>>>> >      * Pin the thread in order to avoid problems with thread migration.
>>>> >      * Once that all verifies are passed about spinlocks ownership,
>>>> >      * the thread is in a safe path and it can be unpinned.
>>>> >      */
>>>> >     sched_pin();
>>>> >     lock_list = PCPU_GET(spinlocks);
>>>> > ffffffff802db21f:   65 48 8b 04 25 48 00    mov    %gs:0x48,%rax
>>>> > ffffffff802db226:   00 00
>>>> >     if (lock_list != NULL && lock_list->ll_count != 0) {
>>>> > ffffffff802db228:   48 85 c0                test   %rax,%rax
>>>> >      * Pin the thread in order to avoid problems with thread migration.
>>>> >      * Once that all verifies are passed about spinlocks ownership,
>>>> >      * the thread is in a safe path and it can be unpinned.
>>>> >      */
>>>> >     sched_pin();
>>>> >     lock_list = PCPU_GET(spinlocks);
>>>> > ffffffff802db22b:   48 89 85 f0 fe ff ff    mov    %rax,-0x110(%rbp)
>>>> > ffffffff802db232:   48 89 85 f8 fe ff ff    mov    %rax,-0x108(%rbp)
>>>> >     if (lock_list != NULL && lock_list->ll_count != 0) {
>>>> > ffffffff802db239:   0f 84 ff 00 00 00       je     ffffffff802db33e
>>>> > <witness_warn+0x30e>
>>>> > ffffffff802db23f:   44 8b 60 50             mov    0x50(%rax),%r12d
>>>> >
>>>> > is it possible for the hardware to do any re-ordering here?
>>>> >
>>>> > The reason I'm suspicious is not just that the code doesn't have a
>>>> > lock leak at the indicated point, but in one instance I can see in the
>>>> > dump that the lock_list local from witness_warn is from the pcpu
>>>> > structure for CPU 0 (and I was warned about sched lock 0), but the
>>>> > thread id in panic_cpu is 2.  So clearly the thread was being migrated
>>>> > right around panic time.
>>>> >
>>>> > This is the amd64 kernel on stable/7.  I'm not sure exactly what kind
>>>> > of hardware; it's a 4-way Intel chip from about 3 or 4 years ago IIRC.
>>>> >
>>>> > So... do we need some kind of barrier in the code for sched_pin() for
>>>> > it to really do what it claims?  Could the hardware have re-ordered
>>>> > the "mov    %gs:0x48,%rax" PCPU_GET to before the sched_pin()
>>>> > increment?
>>>>
>>>> Hmmm, I think it might be able to because they refer to different locations.
>>>>
>>>> Note this rule in section 8.2.2 of Volume 3A:
>>>>
>>>>   • Reads may be reordered with older writes to different locations but not
>>>>     with older writes to the same location.
>>>>
>>>> It is certainly true that sparc64 could reorder with RMO.  I believe ia64
>>>> could reorder as well.  Since sched_pin/unpin are frequently used to provide
>>>> this sort of synchronization, we could use memory barriers in pin/unpin
>>>> like so:
>>>>
>>>> sched_pin()
>>>> {
>>>>       td->td_pinned = atomic_load_acq_int(&td->td_pinned) + 1;
>>>> }
>>>>
>>>> sched_unpin()
>>>> {
>>>>       atomic_store_rel_int(&td->td_pinned, td->td_pinned - 1);
>>>> }
>>>>
>>>> We could also just use atomic_add_acq_int() and atomic_sub_rel_int(), but they
>>>> are slightly more heavyweight, though it would be more clear what is happening
>>>> I think.
>>>
>>> However, to actually get a race you'd have to have an interrupt fire and
>>> migrate you so that the speculative read was from the other CPU.  However, I
>>> don't think the speculative read would be preserved in that case.  The CPU
>>> has to return to a specific PC when it returns from the interrupt and it has
>>> no way of storing the state for what speculative reordering it might be
>>> doing, so presumably it is thrown away?  I suppose it is possible that it
>>> actually retires both instructions (but reordered) and then returns to the PC
>>> value after the read of listlocks after the interrupt.  However, in that case
>>> the scheduler would not migrate as it would see td_pinned != 0.  To get the
>>> race you have to have the interrupt take effect prior to modifying td_pinned,
>>> so I think the processor would have to discard the reordered read of
>>> listlocks so it could safely resume execution at the 'incl' instruction.
>>>
>>> The other nit there on x86 at least is that the incl instruction is doing
>>> both a read and a write and another rule in the section 8.2.2 is this:
>>>
>>>  • Reads are not reordered with other reads.
>>>
>>> That would seem to prevent the read of listlocks from passing the read of
>>> td_pinned in the incl instruction on x86.
>>
>> I wonder how that's interpreted in the microcode, though?  I.e. if the
>> incr instruction decodes to load, add, store, does the h/w allow the
>> later reads to pass the final store?
>>
>> I added the following:
>>
>>        sched_pin();
>>        lock_list = PCPU_GET(spinlocks);
>>        if (lock_list != NULL && lock_list->ll_count != 0) {
>> +               /* XXX debug for bug 67957 */
>> +               mfence();
>> +               lle = PCPU_GET(spinlocks);
>> +               if (lle != lock_list) {
>> +                       panic("Bug 67957: had lock list %p, now %p\n",
>> +                           lock_list, lle);
>> +               }
>> +               /* XXX end debug */
>>                sched_unpin();
>>
>>                /*
>>
>> ... and the panic triggered.  I think it's more likely that some
>> barrier is needed in sched_pin() than that %gs is getting corrupted
>> but can always be dereferenced.
>
> Are the 2 values just different or one of the 2 is NULL?

They are just different.  I don't have a valid dump for this panic,
but the earlier one before I added this check showed that the two are
likely to be from different PCPU structs.

Thanks,
matthew


More information about the freebsd-hackers mailing list