[PATCH] sched: rt: document the risk of small values in thebandwidth settings

From: Peter Zijlstra
Date: Mon May 04 2009 - 11:08:31 EST


Thomas noted that we should disallow sysctl_sched_rt_runtime == 0 for (!
RT_GROUP) since the root group always has some RT tasks in it.

Further, update the documentation to inspire clue.

Signed-off-by: Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@xxxxxxxxx>
Acked-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
---
Documentation/scheduler/sched-rt-group.txt | 18 ++++++++++++++++++
kernel/sched.c | 7 +++++++
2 files changed, 25 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)

diff --git a/Documentation/scheduler/sched-rt-group.txt b/Documentation/scheduler/sched-rt-group.txt
index 5ba4d3f..cfd51c0 100644
--- a/Documentation/scheduler/sched-rt-group.txt
+++ b/Documentation/scheduler/sched-rt-group.txt
@@ -4,6 +4,7 @@
CONTENTS
========

+0. WARNING
1. Overview
1.1 The problem
1.2 The solution
@@ -14,6 +15,23 @@ CONTENTS
3. Future plans


+0. WARNING
+==========
+
+Fiddling with these settings can result in an unusable system, the knobs are
+root only and assume root knows what he's on about.
+
+Most notable:
+
+ * very small values in sched_rt_period_us can result in an unstable
+ system when the period is smaller than either the available hrtimer
+ resolution, or the time it takes to handle the budget refresh itself.
+
+ * very small values in sched_rt_runtime_us can result in an unstable
+ system when the runtime is so small the system has difficulty making
+ forward progress (NOTE: the migration thread and kstopmachine both
+ are real-time processes).
+
1. Overview
===========

diff --git a/kernel/sched.c b/kernel/sched.c
index 11f6da4..c5ef114 100644
--- a/kernel/sched.c
+++ b/kernel/sched.c
@@ -10021,6 +10021,13 @@ static int sched_rt_global_constraints(void)
if (sysctl_sched_rt_period <= 0)
return -EINVAL;

+ /*
+ * There's always some RT tasks in the root group
+ * -- migration, kstopmachine etc..
+ */
+ if (sysctl_sched_rt_runtime == 0)
+ return -EBUSY;
+
spin_lock_irqsave(&def_rt_bandwidth.rt_runtime_lock, flags);
for_each_possible_cpu(i) {
struct rt_rq *rt_rq = &cpu_rq(i)->rt;

--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/