From: Sebastian Andrzej Siewior <bigeasy@linutronix.de> Date: Tue, 21 Mar 2023 17:11:40 +0100 Subject: locking/rwbase: Mitigate indefinite writer starvation. On PREEMPT_RT rw_semaphore and rwlock_t locks are unfair to writers. Readers can indefinitely acquire the lock unless the writer fully acquired the lock, which might never happen if there is always a reader in the critical section owning the lock. Mel Gorman reported that since LTP-20220121 the dio_truncate test case went from having 1 reader to having 16 readers and that number of readers is sufficient to prevent the down_write ever succeeding while readers exist. Eventually the test is killed after 30 minutes as a failure. Mel proposed a timeout to limit how long a writer can be blocked until the reader is forced into the slowpath. Thomas argued that there is no added value by providing this timeout. From a PREEMPT_RT point of view, there are no critical rw_semaphore or rwlock_t locks left where the reader must be preferred. Mitigate indefinite writer starvation by forcing the READER into the slowpath once the WRITER attempts to acquire the lock. Cc: stable-rt@vger.kernel.org Reported-by: Mel Gorman <mgorman@techsingularity.net> Signed-off-by: Sebastian Andrzej Siewior <bigeasy@linutronix.de> Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de> Acked-by: Mel Gorman <mgorman@techsingularity.net> Link: https://lore.kernel.org/877cwbq4cq.ffs@tglx Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20230321161140.HMcQEhHb@linutronix.de --- kernel/locking/rwbase_rt.c | 9 --------- 1 file changed, 9 deletions(-) Index: linux-6.3.0-rt11/kernel/locking/rwbase_rt.c =================================================================== @ linux-6.3.0-rt11/kernel/locking/rwbase_rt.c:75 @ static int __sched __rwbase_read_lock(st int ret; raw_spin_lock_irq(&rtm->wait_lock); - /* - * Allow readers, as long as the writer has not completely - * acquired the semaphore for write. - */ - if (atomic_read(&rwb->readers) != WRITER_BIAS) { - atomic_inc(&rwb->readers); - raw_spin_unlock_irq(&rtm->wait_lock); - return 0; - } /* * Call into the slow lock path with the rtmutex->wait_lock