Re: CPU Hotplug: Hotplug Script And SIGPWR

From: Nick Piggin
Date: Tue Jan 20 2004 - 03:53:37 EST




Stefan Smietanowski wrote:

Hi.

We have a conflict of priority here. If an RT task is affined to CPU A and
CPU A gets yanked out, what do we do?

Obviously the RT task can't keep running as it was. It was affined to A.
Maybe for a good reason. I see we have a few choices here:

* re-affine it automatically, thereby silently undoing the explicit
affinity.
* violate it's RT scheduling by not running it until it has been re-affined
or CPU A returns to the pool/

Sending it a SIGPWR means you have to run it on a different CPU that it was
affined to, which is already a violation.


At least the task has the option to handle the problem.


Why not make a flag that handles that choice explicitly.

If the task sets the affinity itself the default is to
re-affine it if the cpu gets yanked but if the task wants to
be suspended until the CPU reappears it can set a flag for
that to happen if the CPU is yanked.

If we have a program that can start another program on a
specific CPU then that program can dictate how the task
should respond by setting the flag the same way
as the task would if the task would be the one selecting
a specific CPU. Doesn't that fix the problem?


Well I'll admit it would usually be more flexible if you freeze
the process and run hotplug scripts to handle cpu affinity.

Unfortunately it introduces unfixable robustness and realtime
problems by design.


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