BUG: spinlock trylock failure on UP, i.MX28 3.12.15-rt25

[Steven Rostedt]

On Tue, 22 Apr 2014 18:51:17 +0200
Sebastian Andrzej Siewior <bigeasy at linutronix.de> wrote:

> On 04/22/2014 03:46 PM, Steven Rostedt wrote:
> > [ added Peter ]
> > 
> > On Tue, 22 Apr 2014 13:54:39 +0200
> > Sebastian Andrzej Siewior <bigeasy at linutronix.de> wrote:
> >  
> >> this is, erm, harmless. We grab the timer lock via trylock in hardirq
> >> context. If the lock is already taken then we fail to get it we go for
> >> plan B. According to lockdep a trylock should not fail on UP. This is
> >> true in general except for this timer case. I was thinking abour
> >> disabling this lockdep check…
> > 
> > trylock not failing on UP, can that be an issue? I mean, if a hardirq
> > does a trylock to see if it can grab a lock that is not protected by
> > disabling irqs, and will go to plan B if it fails, on UP, it will
> > always get it.  But the issue is still there. That would mean that a
> > hardirq could have preempted a critical section and doing a trylock
> > here would succeed when it really should have failed.
> 
> If you take a lock with irqs enabled and disabled then lockdep should
> complain about it.

There's nothing wrong with taking locks with irqs enabled and disabled.
It's only wrong if that lock (or a lock that is held when the lock is
taken) is also taking in interrupt *context*.

> 
> This is the ->wait_lock of the timer base lock. This (sleeping) lock is
> usually taken with interrupts enabled. Except here, in the timer
> callback, we check if the lock is available or not. And this lock may
> be a) taken (and the ->wait_lock unlocked) or b) in process to be taken
> but the caller only succeeded to acquire the ->wait_lock before the
> interrupt occurred. This is the case here and we can't acquire the
> ->wait_lock a second time the check if the lock is really taken. But
> since the wait_lock is occupied it is likely that the lock itself is
> occupied as well.

I need to take a deeper look into the actual code. But as trylocks on
UP are nops (always succeed), and if it expects to be able to do
something in a critical section that is protected by spinlocks (again
nops on UP), this would be broken for UP.

-- Steve