On 2026-03-18 04:49:52 [-0700], Paul E. McKenney wrote:
> > > Back to the actual bug, that call_srcu() now needs to tolerate being 
> > > called
> > > with scheduler rq/pi locks held...
> > 
> > This is because it is called from sched_ext BPF callbacks?
> 
> You got it!  We are re-implementing Tasks Trace RCU in terms of SRCU-fast,
> and I missed this requirement the first time around.  I *did* make readers
> able to deal with BPF being invoked from everywhere, so two out of three?

right ;)

> > > The straightforward (but perhaps broken) way to resolve this is to make
> > > srcu_gp_start_if_needed() defer invoking the scheduler, similar to the
> > 
> > Quick question. If srcu_gp_start_if_needed() can be invoked from a
> > preempt-disabled section (due to rq/pi lock) then 
> >     spin_lock_irqsave_sdp_contention(sdp, &flags);
> > 
> > does not work, right?
> 
> Agreed, which is why the patch at the end of this email converts this to:
> 
>       raw_spin_lock_irqsave_sdp_contention(sdp, &flags)

I've seen that now. So the spinlock_t usage in SRCU was short.

> > > way that vanilla RCU's call_rcu_core() function takes an early exit if
> > > interrupts are disabled.  Of course, vanilla RCU can rely on things like
> > > the scheduling-clock interrupt to start any needed grace periods [1],
> > > but SRCU will instead need to manually defer this work, perhaps using
> > > workqueues or IRQ work.
> > > 
> > > In addition, rcutorture needs to be upgraded to sometimes invoke
> > > ->call() with the scheduler pi lock held, but this change is not fixing
> > > a regression, so could be deferred.  (There is already code in rcutorture
> > > that invokes the readers while holding a scheduler pi lock.)
> > > 
> > > Given that RCU for this week through the end of March belongs to you guys,
> > > if one of you can get this done by end of day Thursday, London time,
> > > very good!  Otherwise, I can put something together.
> > > 
> > > Please let me know!
> > 
> > Given that the current locking does allow it and lockdep should have
> > complained, I am curious if we could rule that out ;)

Your patch just s/spinlock_t/raw_spinlock_t so we get the locking/
nesting right. The wakeup problem remains, right?
But looking at the code, there is just srcu_funnel_gp_start(). If its
srcu_schedule_cbs_sdp() / queue_delayed_work() usage is always delayed
then there will be always a timer and never a direct wake up of the
worker. Wouldn't that work?

> It would be nice, but your point about needing to worry about spinlocks
> is compelling.
> 
> But couldn't lockdep scan the current task's list of held locks and see
> whether only raw spinlocks are held (including when no spinlocks of any
> type are held), and complain in that case?  Or would that scanning be
> too high of overhead?  (But we need that scan anyway to check deadlock,
> don't we?)

PeterZ didn't like it and the nesting thing identified most of the
problem cases. It should also catch _this_ one.

Thinking about it further, you don't need to worry about
local_bh_disable() but RCU will becomes another corner case. You would
have to exclude "rcu_read_lock(); spin_lock();" on a !preempt kernel
which would otherwise lead to false positives.
But as I said, this case as explained is a nesting problem and should be
reported by lockdep with its current features.

> > >                                           Thanx, Paul [2]
> > > 
> > > [1] The exceptions to this rule being handled by the call to
> > >     invoke_rcu_core() when rcu_is_watching() returns false.
> > > 
> > > [2] Ah, and should vanilla RCU's call_rcu() be invokable from NMI
> > >     handlers?  Or should there be a call_rcu_nmi() for this purpose?
> > >     Or should we continue to have its callers check in_nmi() when needed?
> > 
> > Did someone ask for this?
> 
> Yes.  The BPF guys need to invoke call_srcu() from interrupts-disabled
> regions of code.  I am way to old and lazy to do this sort of thing
> spontaneously.  ;-)

IRQ disabled should work but you asked about call_rcu_nmi() and NMI is
already complicated because "most" other things don't work and you would
need irq_work to let the remaining kernel know that you did something in
NMI and this needs to be integrated now. I don't think regular RCU has
call_rcu() from NMI. But I guess wrapping it via irq_work would be one
way of dealing with it.

>                                                       Thanx, Paul
> 

Sebastian

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