Re: [PATCH] sched: rt: document the risk of small values in the bandwidthsettings

From: Randy Dunlap
Date: Mon May 04 2009 - 11:33:33 EST


Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> 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.

I know that my English is limited, but I don't know what this means:
"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;
>
> --


--
~Randy
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