rcu: Add warning to detect half-interrupts

RCU's dyntick-idle code is written to tolerate half-interrupts, that it,
either an interrupt that invokes rcu_irq_enter() but never invokes the
corresponding rcu_irq_exit() on the one hand, or an interrupt that never
invokes rcu_irq_enter() but does invoke the "corresponding" rcu_irq_exit()
on the other.  These things really did happen at one time, as evidenced
by this ca-2011 LKML post:

http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20111014170019.GE2428@linux.vnet.ibm.com

The reason why RCU tolerates half-interrupts is that usermode helpers
used exceptions to invoke a system call from within the kernel such that
the system call did a normal return (not a return from exception) to
the calling context.  This caused rcu_irq_enter() to be invoked without
a matching rcu_irq_exit().  However, usermode helpers have since been
rewritten to make much more housebroken use of workqueues, kernel threads,
and do_execve(), and therefore should no longer produce half-interrupts.
No one knows of any other source of half-interrupts, but then again,
no one seems insane enough to go audit the entire kernel to verify that
half-interrupts really are a relic of the past.

This commit therefore adds a pair of WARN_ON_ONCE() calls that will
trigger in the presence of half interrupts, which the code will continue
to handle correctly.  If neither of these WARN_ON_ONCE() trigger by
mid-2021, then perhaps RCU can stop handling half-interrupts, which
would be a considerable simplification.

Reported-by: Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org>
Reported-by: Joel Fernandes <joel@joelfernandes.org>
Reported-by: Andy Lutomirski <luto@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Reviewed-by: Joel Fernandes (Google) <joel@joelfernandes.org>

0 files changed, 0 insertions, 0 deletions