locking/rwbase: Mitigate indefinite writer starvation
authorSebastian Andrzej Siewior <bigeasy@linutronix.de>
Tue, 21 Mar 2023 16:11:40 +0000 (17:11 +0100)
committerIngo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org>
Sat, 29 Apr 2023 07:08:52 +0000 (09:08 +0200)
commit286deb7ec03d941664ac3ffaff58814b454adf65
tree1d01efdac97b9739ae0fb6e37f67e1ee9873790d
parent068550631fbe0b7fb41625cea6fb204fdc8cb224
locking/rwbase: Mitigate indefinite writer starvation

On PREEMPT_RT, rw_semaphore and rwlock_t locks are unfair to writers.
Readers can indefinitely acquire the lock unless the writer fully acquired
the lock, which might never happen if there is always a reader in the
critical section owning the lock.

Mel Gorman reported that since LTP-20220121 the dio_truncate test case
went from having 1 reader to having 16 readers and that number of readers
is sufficient to prevent the down_write ever succeeding while readers
exist. Eventually the test is killed after 30 minutes as a failure.

Mel proposed a timeout to limit how long a writer can be blocked until
the reader is forced into the slowpath.

Thomas argued that there is no added value by providing this timeout.  From
a PREEMPT_RT point of view, there are no critical rw_semaphore or rwlock_t
locks left where the reader must be preferred.

Mitigate indefinite writer starvation by forcing the READER into the
slowpath once the WRITER attempts to acquire the lock.

Reported-by: Mel Gorman <mgorman@techsingularity.net>
Signed-off-by: Sebastian Andrzej Siewior <bigeasy@linutronix.de>
Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org>
Acked-by: Mel Gorman <mgorman@techsingularity.net>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/877cwbq4cq.ffs@tglx
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20230321161140.HMcQEhHb@linutronix.de
Cc: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
kernel/locking/rwbase_rt.c