<feed xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom'>
<title>linux-stable.git/include/linux/sched.h, branch linux-2.6.18.y</title>
<subtitle>Linux kernel stable tree</subtitle>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.tavy.me/linux-stable.git/'/>
<entry>
<title>[PATCH] task delay accounting fixes</title>
<updated>2006-09-01T18:39:08+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Shailabh Nagar</name>
<email>nagar@watson.ibm.com</email>
</author>
<published>2006-09-01T04:27:38+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.tavy.me/linux-stable.git/commit/?id=35df17c57cecb08f0120fb18926325f1093dc429'/>
<id>35df17c57cecb08f0120fb18926325f1093dc429</id>
<content type='text'>
Cleanup allocation and freeing of tsk-&gt;delays used by delay accounting.
This solves two problems reported for delay accounting:

1. oops in __delayacct_blkio_ticks
http://www.uwsg.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0608.2/1844.html

Currently tsk-&gt;delays is getting freed too early in task exit which can
cause a NULL tsk-&gt;delays to get accessed via reading of /proc/&lt;tgid&gt;/stats.
 The patch fixes this problem by freeing tsk-&gt;delays closer to when
task_struct itself is freed up.  As a result, it also eliminates the use of
tsk-&gt;delays_lock which was only being used (inadequately) to safeguard
access to tsk-&gt;delays while a task was exiting.

2. Possible memory leak in kernel/delayacct.c
http://www.uwsg.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0608.2/1389.html

The patch cleans up tsk-&gt;delays allocations after a bad fork which was
missing earlier.

The patch has been tested to fix the problems listed above and stress
tested with rapid calls to delay accounting's taskstats command interface
(which is the other path that can access the same data, besides the /proc
interface causing the oops above).

Signed-off-by: Shailabh Nagar &lt;nagar@watson.ibm.com&gt;
Cc: Balbir Singh &lt;balbir@in.ibm.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton &lt;akpm@osdl.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds &lt;torvalds@osdl.org&gt;
</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
Cleanup allocation and freeing of tsk-&gt;delays used by delay accounting.
This solves two problems reported for delay accounting:

1. oops in __delayacct_blkio_ticks
http://www.uwsg.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0608.2/1844.html

Currently tsk-&gt;delays is getting freed too early in task exit which can
cause a NULL tsk-&gt;delays to get accessed via reading of /proc/&lt;tgid&gt;/stats.
 The patch fixes this problem by freeing tsk-&gt;delays closer to when
task_struct itself is freed up.  As a result, it also eliminates the use of
tsk-&gt;delays_lock which was only being used (inadequately) to safeguard
access to tsk-&gt;delays while a task was exiting.

2. Possible memory leak in kernel/delayacct.c
http://www.uwsg.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0608.2/1389.html

The patch cleans up tsk-&gt;delays allocations after a bad fork which was
missing earlier.

The patch has been tested to fix the problems listed above and stress
tested with rapid calls to delay accounting's taskstats command interface
(which is the other path that can access the same data, besides the /proc
interface causing the oops above).

Signed-off-by: Shailabh Nagar &lt;nagar@watson.ibm.com&gt;
Cc: Balbir Singh &lt;balbir@in.ibm.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton &lt;akpm@osdl.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds &lt;torvalds@osdl.org&gt;
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>[PATCH] Make suspend possible with a traced process at a breakpoint</title>
<updated>2006-08-06T15:57:45+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Rafael J. Wysocki</name>
<email>rjw@sisk.pl</email>
</author>
<published>2006-08-05T19:13:42+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.tavy.me/linux-stable.git/commit/?id=a7ef7878ea7c8bca9b624db3f61223cdadda2a0a'/>
<id>a7ef7878ea7c8bca9b624db3f61223cdadda2a0a</id>
<content type='text'>
It should be possible to suspend, either to RAM or to disk, if there's a
traced process that has just reached a breakpoint.  However, this is a
special case, because its parent process might have been frozen already and
then we are unable to deliver the "freeze" signal to the traced process.
If this happens, it's better to cancel the freezing of the traced process.

Ref. http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=6787

Signed-off-by: Rafael J. Wysocki &lt;rjw@sisk.pl&gt;
Acked-by: Pavel Machek &lt;pavel@ucw.cz&gt;
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton &lt;akpm@osdl.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds &lt;torvalds@osdl.org&gt;
</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
It should be possible to suspend, either to RAM or to disk, if there's a
traced process that has just reached a breakpoint.  However, this is a
special case, because its parent process might have been frozen already and
then we are unable to deliver the "freeze" signal to the traced process.
If this happens, it's better to cancel the freezing of the traced process.

Ref. http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=6787

Signed-off-by: Rafael J. Wysocki &lt;rjw@sisk.pl&gt;
Acked-by: Pavel Machek &lt;pavel@ucw.cz&gt;
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton &lt;akpm@osdl.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds &lt;torvalds@osdl.org&gt;
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>[PATCH] delay accounting taskstats interface send tgid once</title>
<updated>2006-07-15T04:53:57+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Shailabh Nagar</name>
<email>nagar@watson.ibm.com</email>
</author>
<published>2006-07-14T07:24:44+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.tavy.me/linux-stable.git/commit/?id=ad4ecbcba72855a2b5319b96e2a3a65ed1ca3bfd'/>
<id>ad4ecbcba72855a2b5319b96e2a3a65ed1ca3bfd</id>
<content type='text'>
Send per-tgid data only once during exit of a thread group instead of once
with each member thread exit.

Currently, when a thread exits, besides its per-tid data, the per-tgid data
of its thread group is also sent out, if its thread group is non-empty.
The per-tgid data sent consists of the sum of per-tid stats for all
*remaining* threads of the thread group.

This patch modifies this sending in two ways:

- the per-tgid data is sent only when the last thread of a thread group
  exits.  This cuts down heavily on the overhead of sending/receiving
  per-tgid data, especially when other exploiters of the taskstats
  interface aren't interested in per-tgid stats

- the semantics of the per-tgid data sent are changed.  Instead of being
  the sum of per-tid data for remaining threads, the value now sent is the
  true total accumalated statistics for all threads that are/were part of
  the thread group.

The patch also addresses a minor issue where failure of one accounting
subsystem to fill in the taskstats structure was causing the send of
taskstats to not be sent at all.

The patch has been tested for stability and run cerberus for over 4 hours
on an SMP.

[akpm@osdl.org: bugfixes]
Signed-off-by: Shailabh Nagar &lt;nagar@watson.ibm.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Balbir Singh &lt;balbir@in.ibm.com&gt;
Cc: Jay Lan &lt;jlan@engr.sgi.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton &lt;akpm@osdl.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds &lt;torvalds@osdl.org&gt;
</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
Send per-tgid data only once during exit of a thread group instead of once
with each member thread exit.

Currently, when a thread exits, besides its per-tid data, the per-tgid data
of its thread group is also sent out, if its thread group is non-empty.
The per-tgid data sent consists of the sum of per-tid stats for all
*remaining* threads of the thread group.

This patch modifies this sending in two ways:

- the per-tgid data is sent only when the last thread of a thread group
  exits.  This cuts down heavily on the overhead of sending/receiving
  per-tgid data, especially when other exploiters of the taskstats
  interface aren't interested in per-tgid stats

- the semantics of the per-tgid data sent are changed.  Instead of being
  the sum of per-tid data for remaining threads, the value now sent is the
  true total accumalated statistics for all threads that are/were part of
  the thread group.

The patch also addresses a minor issue where failure of one accounting
subsystem to fill in the taskstats structure was causing the send of
taskstats to not be sent at all.

The patch has been tested for stability and run cerberus for over 4 hours
on an SMP.

[akpm@osdl.org: bugfixes]
Signed-off-by: Shailabh Nagar &lt;nagar@watson.ibm.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Balbir Singh &lt;balbir@in.ibm.com&gt;
Cc: Jay Lan &lt;jlan@engr.sgi.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton &lt;akpm@osdl.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds &lt;torvalds@osdl.org&gt;
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>[PATCH] per-task-delay-accounting: delay accounting usage of taskstats interface</title>
<updated>2006-07-15T04:53:56+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Shailabh Nagar</name>
<email>nagar@watson.ibm.com</email>
</author>
<published>2006-07-14T07:24:41+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.tavy.me/linux-stable.git/commit/?id=6f44993fe1d7b2b097f6ac60cd5835c6f5ca0874'/>
<id>6f44993fe1d7b2b097f6ac60cd5835c6f5ca0874</id>
<content type='text'>
Usage of taskstats interface by delay accounting.

Signed-off-by: Shailabh Nagar &lt;nagar@us.ibm.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Balbir Singh &lt;balbir@in.ibm.com&gt;
Cc: Jes Sorensen &lt;jes@sgi.com&gt;
Cc: Peter Chubb &lt;peterc@gelato.unsw.edu.au&gt;
Cc: Erich Focht &lt;efocht@ess.nec.de&gt;
Cc: Levent Serinol &lt;lserinol@gmail.com&gt;
Cc: Jay Lan &lt;jlan@engr.sgi.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton &lt;akpm@osdl.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds &lt;torvalds@osdl.org&gt;
</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
Usage of taskstats interface by delay accounting.

Signed-off-by: Shailabh Nagar &lt;nagar@us.ibm.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Balbir Singh &lt;balbir@in.ibm.com&gt;
Cc: Jes Sorensen &lt;jes@sgi.com&gt;
Cc: Peter Chubb &lt;peterc@gelato.unsw.edu.au&gt;
Cc: Erich Focht &lt;efocht@ess.nec.de&gt;
Cc: Levent Serinol &lt;lserinol@gmail.com&gt;
Cc: Jay Lan &lt;jlan@engr.sgi.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton &lt;akpm@osdl.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds &lt;torvalds@osdl.org&gt;
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>[PATCH] per-task-delay-accounting: cpu delay collection via schedstats</title>
<updated>2006-07-15T04:53:56+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Chandra Seetharaman</name>
<email>sekharan@us.ibm.com</email>
</author>
<published>2006-07-14T07:24:38+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.tavy.me/linux-stable.git/commit/?id=52f17b6c2bd443e7806a161e9d10a983650db01d'/>
<id>52f17b6c2bd443e7806a161e9d10a983650db01d</id>
<content type='text'>
Make the task-related schedstats functions callable by delay accounting even
if schedstats collection isn't turned on.  This removes the dependency of
delay accounting on schedstats.

Signed-off-by: Chandra Seetharaman &lt;sekharan@us.ibm.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Shailabh Nagar &lt;nagar@watson.ibm.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Balbir Singh &lt;balbir@in.ibm.com&gt;
Cc: Jes Sorensen &lt;jes@sgi.com&gt;
Cc: Peter Chubb &lt;peterc@gelato.unsw.edu.au&gt;
Cc: Erich Focht &lt;efocht@ess.nec.de&gt;
Cc: Levent Serinol &lt;lserinol@gmail.com&gt;
Cc: Jay Lan &lt;jlan@engr.sgi.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton &lt;akpm@osdl.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds &lt;torvalds@osdl.org&gt;
</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
Make the task-related schedstats functions callable by delay accounting even
if schedstats collection isn't turned on.  This removes the dependency of
delay accounting on schedstats.

Signed-off-by: Chandra Seetharaman &lt;sekharan@us.ibm.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Shailabh Nagar &lt;nagar@watson.ibm.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Balbir Singh &lt;balbir@in.ibm.com&gt;
Cc: Jes Sorensen &lt;jes@sgi.com&gt;
Cc: Peter Chubb &lt;peterc@gelato.unsw.edu.au&gt;
Cc: Erich Focht &lt;efocht@ess.nec.de&gt;
Cc: Levent Serinol &lt;lserinol@gmail.com&gt;
Cc: Jay Lan &lt;jlan@engr.sgi.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton &lt;akpm@osdl.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds &lt;torvalds@osdl.org&gt;
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>[PATCH] per-task-delay-accounting: sync block I/O and swapin delay collection</title>
<updated>2006-07-15T04:53:56+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Shailabh Nagar</name>
<email>nagar@watson.ibm.com</email>
</author>
<published>2006-07-14T07:24:37+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.tavy.me/linux-stable.git/commit/?id=0ff922452df86f3e9a2c6f705c4588ec62d096a7'/>
<id>0ff922452df86f3e9a2c6f705c4588ec62d096a7</id>
<content type='text'>
Unlike earlier iterations of the delay accounting patches, now delays are only
collected for the actual I/O waits rather than try and cover the delays seen
in I/O submission paths.

Account separately for block I/O delays incurred as a result of swapin page
faults whose frequency can be affected by the task/process' rss limit.  Hence
swapin delays can act as feedback for rss limit changes independent of I/O
priority changes.

Signed-off-by: Shailabh Nagar &lt;nagar@watson.ibm.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Balbir Singh &lt;balbir@in.ibm.com&gt;
Cc: Jes Sorensen &lt;jes@sgi.com&gt;
Cc: Peter Chubb &lt;peterc@gelato.unsw.edu.au&gt;
Cc: Erich Focht &lt;efocht@ess.nec.de&gt;
Cc: Levent Serinol &lt;lserinol@gmail.com&gt;
Cc: Jay Lan &lt;jlan@engr.sgi.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton &lt;akpm@osdl.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds &lt;torvalds@osdl.org&gt;
</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
Unlike earlier iterations of the delay accounting patches, now delays are only
collected for the actual I/O waits rather than try and cover the delays seen
in I/O submission paths.

Account separately for block I/O delays incurred as a result of swapin page
faults whose frequency can be affected by the task/process' rss limit.  Hence
swapin delays can act as feedback for rss limit changes independent of I/O
priority changes.

Signed-off-by: Shailabh Nagar &lt;nagar@watson.ibm.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Balbir Singh &lt;balbir@in.ibm.com&gt;
Cc: Jes Sorensen &lt;jes@sgi.com&gt;
Cc: Peter Chubb &lt;peterc@gelato.unsw.edu.au&gt;
Cc: Erich Focht &lt;efocht@ess.nec.de&gt;
Cc: Levent Serinol &lt;lserinol@gmail.com&gt;
Cc: Jay Lan &lt;jlan@engr.sgi.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton &lt;akpm@osdl.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds &lt;torvalds@osdl.org&gt;
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>[PATCH] per-task-delay-accounting: setup</title>
<updated>2006-07-15T04:53:56+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Shailabh Nagar</name>
<email>nagar@watson.ibm.com</email>
</author>
<published>2006-07-14T07:24:36+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.tavy.me/linux-stable.git/commit/?id=ca74e92b4698276b6696f15a801759f50944f387'/>
<id>ca74e92b4698276b6696f15a801759f50944f387</id>
<content type='text'>
Initialization code related to collection of per-task "delay" statistics which
measure how long it had to wait for cpu, sync block io, swapping etc.  The
collection of statistics and the interface are in other patches.  This patch
sets up the data structures and allows the statistics collection to be
disabled through a kernel boot parameter.

Signed-off-by: Shailabh Nagar &lt;nagar@watson.ibm.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Balbir Singh &lt;balbir@in.ibm.com&gt;
Cc: Jes Sorensen &lt;jes@sgi.com&gt;
Cc: Peter Chubb &lt;peterc@gelato.unsw.edu.au&gt;
Cc: Erich Focht &lt;efocht@ess.nec.de&gt;
Cc: Levent Serinol &lt;lserinol@gmail.com&gt;
Cc: Jay Lan &lt;jlan@engr.sgi.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton &lt;akpm@osdl.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds &lt;torvalds@osdl.org&gt;
</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
Initialization code related to collection of per-task "delay" statistics which
measure how long it had to wait for cpu, sync block io, swapping etc.  The
collection of statistics and the interface are in other patches.  This patch
sets up the data structures and allows the statistics collection to be
disabled through a kernel boot parameter.

Signed-off-by: Shailabh Nagar &lt;nagar@watson.ibm.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Balbir Singh &lt;balbir@in.ibm.com&gt;
Cc: Jes Sorensen &lt;jes@sgi.com&gt;
Cc: Peter Chubb &lt;peterc@gelato.unsw.edu.au&gt;
Cc: Erich Focht &lt;efocht@ess.nec.de&gt;
Cc: Levent Serinol &lt;lserinol@gmail.com&gt;
Cc: Jay Lan &lt;jlan@engr.sgi.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton &lt;akpm@osdl.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds &lt;torvalds@osdl.org&gt;
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>[PATCH] sched: cleanup, convert sched.c-internal typedefs to struct</title>
<updated>2006-07-03T22:27:11+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Ingo Molnar</name>
<email>mingo@elte.hu</email>
</author>
<published>2006-07-03T07:25:42+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.tavy.me/linux-stable.git/commit/?id=70b97a7f0b19cf1f2619deb5cc41e8b78c591aa7'/>
<id>70b97a7f0b19cf1f2619deb5cc41e8b78c591aa7</id>
<content type='text'>
convert:

 - runqueue_t to 'struct rq'
 - prio_array_t to 'struct prio_array'
 - migration_req_t to 'struct migration_req'

I was the one who added these but they are both against the kernel coding
style and also were used inconsistently at places.  So just get rid of them at
once, now that we are flushing the scheduler patch-queue anyway.

Conversion was mostly scripted, the result was reviewed and all secondary
whitespace and style impact (if any) was fixed up by hand.

Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar &lt;mingo@elte.hu&gt;
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton &lt;akpm@osdl.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds &lt;torvalds@osdl.org&gt;
</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
convert:

 - runqueue_t to 'struct rq'
 - prio_array_t to 'struct prio_array'
 - migration_req_t to 'struct migration_req'

I was the one who added these but they are both against the kernel coding
style and also were used inconsistently at places.  So just get rid of them at
once, now that we are flushing the scheduler patch-queue anyway.

Conversion was mostly scripted, the result was reviewed and all secondary
whitespace and style impact (if any) was fixed up by hand.

Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar &lt;mingo@elte.hu&gt;
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton &lt;akpm@osdl.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds &lt;torvalds@osdl.org&gt;
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>[PATCH] sched: cleanup, remove task_t, convert to struct task_struct</title>
<updated>2006-07-03T22:27:11+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Ingo Molnar</name>
<email>mingo@elte.hu</email>
</author>
<published>2006-07-03T07:25:41+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.tavy.me/linux-stable.git/commit/?id=36c8b586896f60cb91a4fd526233190b34316baf'/>
<id>36c8b586896f60cb91a4fd526233190b34316baf</id>
<content type='text'>
cleanup: remove task_t and convert all the uses to struct task_struct. I
introduced it for the scheduler anno and it was a mistake.

Conversion was mostly scripted, the result was reviewed and all
secondary whitespace and style impact (if any) was fixed up by hand.

Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar &lt;mingo@elte.hu&gt;
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton &lt;akpm@osdl.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds &lt;torvalds@osdl.org&gt;
</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
cleanup: remove task_t and convert all the uses to struct task_struct. I
introduced it for the scheduler anno and it was a mistake.

Conversion was mostly scripted, the result was reviewed and all
secondary whitespace and style impact (if any) was fixed up by hand.

Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar &lt;mingo@elte.hu&gt;
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton &lt;akpm@osdl.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds &lt;torvalds@osdl.org&gt;
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>[PATCH] lockdep: core</title>
<updated>2006-07-03T22:27:03+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Ingo Molnar</name>
<email>mingo@elte.hu</email>
</author>
<published>2006-07-03T07:24:50+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.tavy.me/linux-stable.git/commit/?id=fbb9ce9530fd9b66096d5187fa6a115d16d9746c'/>
<id>fbb9ce9530fd9b66096d5187fa6a115d16d9746c</id>
<content type='text'>
Do 'make oldconfig' and accept all the defaults for new config options -
reboot into the kernel and if everything goes well it should boot up fine and
you should have /proc/lockdep and /proc/lockdep_stats files.

Typically if the lock validator finds some problem it will print out
voluminous debug output that begins with "BUG: ..." and which syslog output
can be used by kernel developers to figure out the precise locking scenario.

What does the lock validator do?  It "observes" and maps all locking rules as
they occur dynamically (as triggered by the kernel's natural use of spinlocks,
rwlocks, mutexes and rwsems).  Whenever the lock validator subsystem detects a
new locking scenario, it validates this new rule against the existing set of
rules.  If this new rule is consistent with the existing set of rules then the
new rule is added transparently and the kernel continues as normal.  If the
new rule could create a deadlock scenario then this condition is printed out.

When determining validity of locking, all possible "deadlock scenarios" are
considered: assuming arbitrary number of CPUs, arbitrary irq context and task
context constellations, running arbitrary combinations of all the existing
locking scenarios.  In a typical system this means millions of separate
scenarios.  This is why we call it a "locking correctness" validator - for all
rules that are observed the lock validator proves it with mathematical
certainty that a deadlock could not occur (assuming that the lock validator
implementation itself is correct and its internal data structures are not
corrupted by some other kernel subsystem).  [see more details and conditionals
of this statement in include/linux/lockdep.h and
Documentation/lockdep-design.txt]

Furthermore, this "all possible scenarios" property of the validator also
enables the finding of complex, highly unlikely multi-CPU multi-context races
via single single-context rules, increasing the likelyhood of finding bugs
drastically.  In practical terms: the lock validator already found a bug in
the upstream kernel that could only occur on systems with 3 or more CPUs, and
which needed 3 very unlikely code sequences to occur at once on the 3 CPUs.
That bug was found and reported on a single-CPU system (!).  So in essence a
race will be found "piecemail-wise", triggering all the necessary components
for the race, without having to reproduce the race scenario itself!  In its
short existence the lock validator found and reported many bugs before they
actually caused a real deadlock.

To further increase the efficiency of the validator, the mapping is not per
"lock instance", but per "lock-class".  For example, all struct inode objects
in the kernel have inode-&gt;inotify_mutex.  If there are 10,000 inodes cached,
then there are 10,000 lock objects.  But -&gt;inotify_mutex is a single "lock
type", and all locking activities that occur against -&gt;inotify_mutex are
"unified" into this single lock-class.  The advantage of the lock-class
approach is that all historical -&gt;inotify_mutex uses are mapped into a single
(and as narrow as possible) set of locking rules - regardless of how many
different tasks or inode structures it took to build this set of rules.  The
set of rules persist during the lifetime of the kernel.

To see the rough magnitude of checking that the lock validator does, here's a
portion of /proc/lockdep_stats, fresh after bootup:

 lock-classes:                            694 [max: 2048]
 direct dependencies:                  1598 [max: 8192]
 indirect dependencies:               17896
 all direct dependencies:             16206
 dependency chains:                    1910 [max: 8192]
 in-hardirq chains:                      17
 in-softirq chains:                     105
 in-process chains:                    1065
 stack-trace entries:                 38761 [max: 131072]
 combined max dependencies:         2033928
 hardirq-safe locks:                     24
 hardirq-unsafe locks:                  176
 softirq-safe locks:                     53
 softirq-unsafe locks:                  137
 irq-safe locks:                         59
 irq-unsafe locks:                      176

The lock validator has observed 1598 actual single-thread locking patterns,
and has validated all possible 2033928 distinct locking scenarios.

More details about the design of the lock validator can be found in
Documentation/lockdep-design.txt, which can also found at:

   http://redhat.com/~mingo/lockdep-patches/lockdep-design.txt

[bunk@stusta.de: cleanups]
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar &lt;mingo@elte.hu&gt;
Signed-off-by: Arjan van de Ven &lt;arjan@linux.intel.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Adrian Bunk &lt;bunk@stusta.de&gt;
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton &lt;akpm@osdl.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds &lt;torvalds@osdl.org&gt;
</content>
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<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
Do 'make oldconfig' and accept all the defaults for new config options -
reboot into the kernel and if everything goes well it should boot up fine and
you should have /proc/lockdep and /proc/lockdep_stats files.

Typically if the lock validator finds some problem it will print out
voluminous debug output that begins with "BUG: ..." and which syslog output
can be used by kernel developers to figure out the precise locking scenario.

What does the lock validator do?  It "observes" and maps all locking rules as
they occur dynamically (as triggered by the kernel's natural use of spinlocks,
rwlocks, mutexes and rwsems).  Whenever the lock validator subsystem detects a
new locking scenario, it validates this new rule against the existing set of
rules.  If this new rule is consistent with the existing set of rules then the
new rule is added transparently and the kernel continues as normal.  If the
new rule could create a deadlock scenario then this condition is printed out.

When determining validity of locking, all possible "deadlock scenarios" are
considered: assuming arbitrary number of CPUs, arbitrary irq context and task
context constellations, running arbitrary combinations of all the existing
locking scenarios.  In a typical system this means millions of separate
scenarios.  This is why we call it a "locking correctness" validator - for all
rules that are observed the lock validator proves it with mathematical
certainty that a deadlock could not occur (assuming that the lock validator
implementation itself is correct and its internal data structures are not
corrupted by some other kernel subsystem).  [see more details and conditionals
of this statement in include/linux/lockdep.h and
Documentation/lockdep-design.txt]

Furthermore, this "all possible scenarios" property of the validator also
enables the finding of complex, highly unlikely multi-CPU multi-context races
via single single-context rules, increasing the likelyhood of finding bugs
drastically.  In practical terms: the lock validator already found a bug in
the upstream kernel that could only occur on systems with 3 or more CPUs, and
which needed 3 very unlikely code sequences to occur at once on the 3 CPUs.
That bug was found and reported on a single-CPU system (!).  So in essence a
race will be found "piecemail-wise", triggering all the necessary components
for the race, without having to reproduce the race scenario itself!  In its
short existence the lock validator found and reported many bugs before they
actually caused a real deadlock.

To further increase the efficiency of the validator, the mapping is not per
"lock instance", but per "lock-class".  For example, all struct inode objects
in the kernel have inode-&gt;inotify_mutex.  If there are 10,000 inodes cached,
then there are 10,000 lock objects.  But -&gt;inotify_mutex is a single "lock
type", and all locking activities that occur against -&gt;inotify_mutex are
"unified" into this single lock-class.  The advantage of the lock-class
approach is that all historical -&gt;inotify_mutex uses are mapped into a single
(and as narrow as possible) set of locking rules - regardless of how many
different tasks or inode structures it took to build this set of rules.  The
set of rules persist during the lifetime of the kernel.

To see the rough magnitude of checking that the lock validator does, here's a
portion of /proc/lockdep_stats, fresh after bootup:

 lock-classes:                            694 [max: 2048]
 direct dependencies:                  1598 [max: 8192]
 indirect dependencies:               17896
 all direct dependencies:             16206
 dependency chains:                    1910 [max: 8192]
 in-hardirq chains:                      17
 in-softirq chains:                     105
 in-process chains:                    1065
 stack-trace entries:                 38761 [max: 131072]
 combined max dependencies:         2033928
 hardirq-safe locks:                     24
 hardirq-unsafe locks:                  176
 softirq-safe locks:                     53
 softirq-unsafe locks:                  137
 irq-safe locks:                         59
 irq-unsafe locks:                      176

The lock validator has observed 1598 actual single-thread locking patterns,
and has validated all possible 2033928 distinct locking scenarios.

More details about the design of the lock validator can be found in
Documentation/lockdep-design.txt, which can also found at:

   http://redhat.com/~mingo/lockdep-patches/lockdep-design.txt

[bunk@stusta.de: cleanups]
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar &lt;mingo@elte.hu&gt;
Signed-off-by: Arjan van de Ven &lt;arjan@linux.intel.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Adrian Bunk &lt;bunk@stusta.de&gt;
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton &lt;akpm@osdl.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds &lt;torvalds@osdl.org&gt;
</pre>
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</content>
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