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Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/RCU/checklist.txt')
| -rw-r--r-- | Documentation/RCU/checklist.txt | 46 |
1 files changed, 39 insertions, 7 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/RCU/checklist.txt b/Documentation/RCU/checklist.txt index 790d1a81237..0c134f8afc6 100644 --- a/Documentation/RCU/checklist.txt +++ b/Documentation/RCU/checklist.txt @@ -218,13 +218,22 @@ over a rather long period of time, but improvements are always welcome! include: a. Keeping a count of the number of data-structure elements - used by the RCU-protected data structure, including those - waiting for a grace period to elapse. Enforce a limit - on this number, stalling updates as needed to allow - previously deferred frees to complete. - - Alternatively, limit only the number awaiting deferred - free rather than the total number of elements. + used by the RCU-protected data structure, including + those waiting for a grace period to elapse. Enforce a + limit on this number, stalling updates as needed to allow + previously deferred frees to complete. Alternatively, + limit only the number awaiting deferred free rather than + the total number of elements. + + One way to stall the updates is to acquire the update-side + mutex. (Don't try this with a spinlock -- other CPUs + spinning on the lock could prevent the grace period + from ever ending.) Another way to stall the updates + is for the updates to use a wrapper function around + the memory allocator, so that this wrapper function + simulates OOM when there is too much memory awaiting an + RCU grace period. There are of course many other + variations on this theme. b. Limiting update rate. For example, if updates occur only once per hour, then no explicit rate limiting is required, @@ -365,3 +374,26 @@ over a rather long period of time, but improvements are always welcome! and the compiler to freely reorder code into and out of RCU read-side critical sections. It is the responsibility of the RCU update-side primitives to deal with this. + +17. Use CONFIG_PROVE_RCU, CONFIG_DEBUG_OBJECTS_RCU_HEAD, and + the __rcu sparse checks to validate your RCU code. These + can help find problems as follows: + + CONFIG_PROVE_RCU: check that accesses to RCU-protected data + structures are carried out under the proper RCU + read-side critical section, while holding the right + combination of locks, or whatever other conditions + are appropriate. + + CONFIG_DEBUG_OBJECTS_RCU_HEAD: check that you don't pass the + same object to call_rcu() (or friends) before an RCU + grace period has elapsed since the last time that you + passed that same object to call_rcu() (or friends). + + __rcu sparse checks: tag the pointer to the RCU-protected data + structure with __rcu, and sparse will warn you if you + access that pointer without the services of one of the + variants of rcu_dereference(). + + These debugging aids can help you find problems that are + otherwise extremely difficult to spot. |