As noted earlier, the following sequence of events can occur when
running PREEMPT_RCU and HOTPLUG_CPU on a system with a multi-level
rcu_node combining tree:
1. A group of tasks block on CPUs corresponding to a given leaf
rcu_node structure while within RCU read-side critical sections.
2. All CPUs corrsponding to that rcu_node structure go offline.
3. The next grace period starts, but because there are still tasks
blocked, the upper-level bits corresponding to this leaf rcu_node
structure remain set.
4. All the tasks exit their RCU read-side critical sections and
remove themselves from the leaf rcu_node structure's list,
leaving it empty.
5. But because there now is code to check for this condition at
force-quiescent-state time, the upper bits are cleared and the
grace period completes.
However, there is another complication that can occur following step 4 above:
4a. The grace period starts, and the leaf rcu_node structure's
gp_tasks pointer is set to NULL because there are no tasks
blocked on this structure.
4b. One of the CPUs corresponding to the leaf rcu_node structure
comes back online.
4b. An endless stream of tasks are preempted within RCU read-side
critical sections on this CPU, such that the ->blkd_tasks
list is always non-empty.
The grace period will never end.
This commit therefore makes the force-quiescent-state processing check only
for absence of tasks blocking the current grace period rather than absence
of tasks altogether. This will cause a quiescent state to be reported if
the current leaf rcu_node structure is not blocking the current grace period
and its parent thinks that it is, regardless of how RCU managed to get
itself into this state.
Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Cc: <stable@vger.kernel.org> # 4.0.x
Tested-by: Sasha Levin <sasha.levin@oracle.com>
a77da14ce9