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rcu: Add PROVE_RCU_DELAY to provoke difficult races
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There have been some recent bugs that were triggered only when
preemptible RCU's __rcu_read_unlock() was preempted just after setting
->rcu_read_lock_nesting to INT_MIN, which is a low-probability event.
Therefore, reproducing those bugs (to say nothing of gaining confidence
in alleged fixes) was quite difficult.  This commit therefore creates
a new debug-only RCU kernel config option that forces a short delay
in __rcu_read_unlock() to increase the probability of those sorts of
bugs occurring.

Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney <paul.mckenney@linaro.org>
Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Reviewed-by: Josh Triplett <josh@joshtriplett.org>
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Paul E. McKenney authored and Paul E. McKenney committed Sep 23, 2012
1 parent a10d206 commit e3ebfb9
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Showing 2 changed files with 18 additions and 0 deletions.
4 changes: 4 additions & 0 deletions kernel/rcupdate.c
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -45,6 +45,7 @@
#include <linux/mutex.h>
#include <linux/export.h>
#include <linux/hardirq.h>
#include <linux/delay.h>

#define CREATE_TRACE_POINTS
#include <trace/events/rcu.h>
Expand Down Expand Up @@ -81,6 +82,9 @@ void __rcu_read_unlock(void)
} else {
barrier(); /* critical section before exit code. */
t->rcu_read_lock_nesting = INT_MIN;
#ifdef CONFIG_PROVE_RCU_DELAY
udelay(10); /* Make preemption more probable. */
#endif /* #ifdef CONFIG_PROVE_RCU_DELAY */
barrier(); /* assign before ->rcu_read_unlock_special load */
if (unlikely(ACCESS_ONCE(t->rcu_read_unlock_special)))
rcu_read_unlock_special(t);
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14 changes: 14 additions & 0 deletions lib/Kconfig.debug
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -629,6 +629,20 @@ config PROVE_RCU_REPEATEDLY

Say N if you are unsure.

config PROVE_RCU_DELAY
bool "RCU debugging: preemptible RCU race provocation"
depends on DEBUG_KERNEL && PREEMPT_RCU
default n
help
There is a class of races that involve an unlikely preemption
of __rcu_read_unlock() just after ->rcu_read_lock_nesting has
been set to INT_MIN. This feature inserts a delay at that
point to increase the probability of these races.

Say Y to increase probability of preemption of __rcu_read_unlock().

Say N if you are unsure.

config SPARSE_RCU_POINTER
bool "RCU debugging: sparse-based checks for pointer usage"
default n
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