Re: RFC: call_rcu_outstanding (was Re: WARNING in __mmdrop)

[Michael S. Tsirkin]

On Mon, Jul 22, 2019 at 11:14:39AM -0400, Joel Fernandes wrote:
> [snip]
> > > Would it make sense to have call_rcu() check to see if there are many
> > > outstanding requests on this CPU and if so process them before returning?
> > > That would ensure that frequent callers usually ended up doing their
> > > own processing.
> 
> Other than what Paul already mentioned about deadlocks, I am not sure if this
> would even work for all cases since call_rcu() has to wait for a grace
> period.
> 
> So, if the number of outstanding requests are higher than a certain amount,
> then you *still* have to wait for some RCU configurations for the grace
> period duration and cannot just execute the callback in-line. Did I miss
> something?
> 
> Can waiting in-line for a grace period duration be tolerated in the vhost case?
> 
> thanks,
> 
>  - Joel

No, but it has many other ways to recover (try again later, drop a
packet, use a slower copy to/from user).

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MST