Re: [RFC PATCH v1] sched/uclamp: Introduce SCHED_FLAG_RESET_UCLAMP_ON_FORK flag

From: Qais Yousef
Date: Thu Apr 20 2023 - 13:38:20 EST


On 04/20/23 09:22, Saravana Kannan wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 20, 2023 at 2:37 AM Dietmar Eggemann
> <dietmar.eggemann@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> > On 20/04/2023 03:11, David Dai wrote:
> > > On Tue, Apr 18, 2023 at 10:18 PM Dietmar Eggemann
> > > <dietmar.eggemann@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> > >>
> > >
> > > Hi Dietmar, thanks for your time,
> > >
> > >> On 16/04/2023 23:34, David Dai wrote:
> > >>> A userspace service may manage uclamp dynamically for individual tasks and
> > >>> a child task will unintentionally inherit a pesudo-random uclamp setting.
> > >>> This could result in the child task being stuck with a static uclamp value
> > >>
> > >> Could you explain this with a little bit more detail? Why isn't the
> > >> child task also managed by the userspace service?
> > >
> > > See Qais’ reply that contains more detail on how it’s being used in
> > > Android. In general, if a dynamic userspace service will adjust uclamp
> > > on the fly for a given task, but has no knowledge or control over if
> > > or when a task forks. Depending on the timing of the fork, a child
> > > task may inherit a very large or a small uclamp_min or uclamp_max
> > > value. The intent of this patch is to provide more flexibility to the
> > > uclamp APIs such that child tasks do not get stuck with a poor uclamp
> > > value when spawned while retaining other sched attributes. When
> > > RESET_ON_FORK is set on the parent task, it will reset uclamp values
> > > for the child but also reset other sched attributes as well.
> >
> > OK, in this case, why not just change behavior and always reset the
> > uclamp values at fork?
>
> Personally, I'd have preferred uclamp was never inherited in the first
> place, but wouldn't that be considered as breaking UAPI if we change
> it now?

Why is it okay to inherit priority but not uclamp? I see this is hacky and
setting a policy in the kernel. Let's not tailor it to specific use cases only
please.


--
Qais Yousef