Re: Linux v2.6.18-rc3

[Alan Stern <stern@rowland.harvard.edu>]

On Sun, 30 Jul 2006, Andrew Morton wrote:

> On Sun, 30 Jul 2006 21:13:48 -0700
> "Jesse Brandeburg" <jesse.brandeburg@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > On 7/29/06, Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org> wrote:
> > >
> > > Ok, this missed a week (it should really have been -rc4, and we should
> > > have had a -rc3 a week ago), but the fact is, with a lot of people at the
> > > kernel summit and at OLS, it was so quiet for a week that there simply was
> > > no point.
> > 
> > not sure if this is a regression or not, get this on my IBM thinkpad
> > T43 when resuming from S3 or from hibernate to disk.
> > 
> > acpi acpi: suspend
> > PM: Entering mem sleep
> > Intel machine check architecture supported.
> > Intel machine check reporting enabled on CPU#0.
> > Back to C!
> > BUG: sleeping function called from invalid context at kernel/rwsem.c:20
> > in_atomic():0, irqs_disabled():1
> >  [<c012d638>] down_read+0x12/0x1f
> >  [<c012605b>] blocking_notifier_call_chain+0xe/0x29
> >  [<c029199a>] cpufreq_resume+0x118/0x13f
> >  [<c0231b68>] __sysdev_resume+0x20/0x53
> >  [<c0231ca9>] sysdev_resume+0x16/0x47
> >  [<c0235f93>] device_power_up+0x5/0xa
> >  [<c013358d>] suspend_enter+0x3b/0x44
> >  [<c011b644>] printk+0x1b/0x1f
> >  [<c01336fe>] enter_state+0x168/0x198
> >  [<c01337b3>] state_store+0x85/0x99
> >  [<c013372e>] state_store+0x0/0x99
> >  [<c019047a>] subsys_attr_store+0x1e/0x22
> >  [<c01906ca>] sysfs_write_file+0xa6/0xcc
> >  [<c0190624>] sysfs_write_file+0x0/0xcc
> >  [<c015ae52>] vfs_write+0xa8/0x159
> >  [<c015b398>] sys_write+0x41/0x67
> >  [<c0102bc9>] sysenter_past_esp+0x56/0x79
> > PM: Finishing wakeup.
> > acpi acpi: resuming
> > 
> > full dmesg and .config attached, I can test patches.
> 
> I think this is the cpufreq problem wherein it sometimes requires that the
> notifier chain be traversed from atomic context and at other times it
> requires that sleeping functions be callable from within the traversal. 
> IOW: we're screwed whatever type of locking we use on that chain.

I have looked at that problem more closely, and my earlier understanding
wasn't quite right.  It's not that the context needs to be atomic at some
times but not others -- it should always be a process context.  The
problem is that the suspend and resume traversals are done at a time when
interrupts need to remain disabled, since cpufreq registers its drivers as
sysdevs.  (Kind of like SYSTEM_BOOTING, except that system_state isn't set
to anything special.)  Because the down_read() call that protects the
notifier chain isn't allowed when interrupts are disabled, the BUG occurs.

> I think Alan is cooking up a scheme wherein we fix this with an srcu-locked
> notifier chain.  If so, it'd be nice to get that moving along a bit?

Yes; protecting the notifier chain by SRCU instead of an rwsem will 
prevent the problem.  It's a trivial change, except for one thing: SRCU 
structures require initialization at runtime before they can be used.  
This initialization must be done before any driver tries to register on 
the cpufreq transition notifier chain.

If someone could give me a hint where a good place would be to carry out
the initialization, I'd appreciate it.  Would an initcall be appropriate?  
And if so, which sort of initcall?  core_initcall?  The only requirement 
is that alloc_percpu() must be available.

Alan Stern

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