The rcu_read_unlock_special() function relies on in_irq() to exclude
scheduler activity from interrupt level. This fails because exit_irq()
can invoke the scheduler after clearing the preempt_count() bits that
in_irq() uses to determine that it is at interrupt level. This situation
can result in failures as follows:
$task IRQ SoftIRQ
rcu_read_lock()
/* do stuff */
<preempt> |= UNLOCK_BLOCKED
rcu_read_unlock()
--t->rcu_read_lock_nesting
irq_enter();
/* do stuff, don't use RCU */
irq_exit();
sub_preempt_count(IRQ_EXIT_OFFSET);
invoke_softirq()
Ed can simply trigger this 'easy' because invoke_softirq() immediately
does a ttwu() of ksoftirqd/# instead of doing the in-place softirq stuff
first, but even without that the above happens.
Cure this by also excluding softirqs from the
rcu_read_unlock_special() handler and ensuring the force_irqthreads
ksoftirqd/# wakeup is done from full softirq context.
[ Alternatively, delaying the ->rcu_read_lock_nesting decrement
until after the special handling would make the thing more robust
in the face of interrupts as well. And there is a separate patch
for that. ]
Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de> Reported-and-tested-by: Ed Tomlinson <edt@aei.ca> Signed-off-by: Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@chello.nl> Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com>