nohz: prevent tick stop outside of the idle loop

Jack Ren and Eric Miao tracked down the following long standing
problem in the NOHZ code:

	scheduler switch to idle task
	enable interrupts

Window starts here

	----> interrupt happens (does not set NEED_RESCHED)
	      	irq_exit() stops the tick

	----> interrupt happens (does set NEED_RESCHED)

	return from schedule()
	
	cpu_idle(): preempt_disable();

Window ends here

The interrupts can happen at any point inside the race window. The
first interrupt stops the tick, the second one causes the scheduler to
rerun and switch away from idle again and we end up with the tick
disabled.

The fact that it needs two interrupts where the first one does not set
NEED_RESCHED and the second one does made the bug obscure and extremly
hard to reproduce and analyse. Kudos to Jack and Eric.

Solution: Limit the NOHZ functionality to the idle loop to make sure
that we can not run into such a situation ever again.

cpu_idle()
{
	preempt_disable();

	while(1) {
		 tick_nohz_stop_sched_tick(1); <- tell NOHZ code that we
		 			          are in the idle loop

		 while (!need_resched())
		       halt();

		 tick_nohz_restart_sched_tick(); <- disables NOHZ mode
		 preempt_enable_no_resched();
		 schedule();
		 preempt_disable();
	}
}

In hindsight we should have done this forever, but ... 

/me grabs a large brown paperbag.

Debugged-by: Jack Ren <jack.ren@marvell.com>, 
Debugged-by: eric miao <eric.y.miao@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>

1 files changed, 10 insertions, 2 deletions

diff --git a/kernel/time/tick-sched.c b/kernel/time/tick-sched.c
index 86baa4f0dfe..ee962d11107 100644
--- a/kernel/time/tick-sched.c
+++ b/kernel/time/tick-sched.c
@@ -195,7 +195,7 @@ u64 get_cpu_idle_time_us(int cpu, u64 *last_update_time)
  * Called either from the idle loop or from irq_exit() when an idle period was
  * just interrupted by an interrupt which did not cause a reschedule.
  */
-void tick_nohz_stop_sched_tick(void)
+void tick_nohz_stop_sched_tick(int inidle)
 {
 	unsigned long seq, last_jiffies, next_jiffies, delta_jiffies, flags;
 	struct tick_sched *ts;
@@ -224,6 +224,11 @@ void tick_nohz_stop_sched_tick(void)
 	if (unlikely(ts->nohz_mode == NOHZ_MODE_INACTIVE))
 		goto end;
 
+	if (!inidle && !ts->inidle)
+		goto end;
+
+	ts->inidle = 1;
+
 	if (need_resched())
 		goto end;
 
@@ -372,11 +377,14 @@ void tick_nohz_restart_sched_tick(void)
 	local_irq_disable();
 	tick_nohz_stop_idle(cpu);
 
-	if (!ts->tick_stopped) {
+	if (!ts->inidle || !ts->tick_stopped) {
+		ts->inidle = 0;
 		local_irq_enable();
 		return;
 	}
 
+	ts->inidle = 0;
+
 	rcu_exit_nohz();
 
 	/* Update jiffies first */