Subject: Re: question about softirqs

From: Eric Dumazet <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 May 2009 16:54:44 +0200

Andi Kleen a écrit :
> Thomas Gleixner <[email-masked]> writes:
> 
> 
>> Err, no. Chris is completely correct:
>>
>>         if (!in_interrupt())
>> 		wakeup_softirqd();
> 
> Yes you have to wake it up just in case, but it doesn't normally
> process the data because a normal softirq comes in faster. It's
> just a safety policy. 
> 
> You can check this by checking the accumulated CPU time on your
> ksoftirqs.  Mine are all 0 even on long running systems.
> 

Then its a bug Andi. Its quite easy to trigger ksoftirqd with a Gb ethernet link.

commit f5f293a4e3d0a0c52cec31de6762c95050156516 corrected something
(making mpstat and top correctly display softirq on cpu stats),
but apparently we still have a problem to report correct time on processes,
particularly on ksoftirq/x

I have one machine SMP flooded by network frames, CPU0 handling all
the work, inside ksoftirq/0 (napi processing : almost no more hard interrupts delivered)

Still, top or ps reports no more than 30% of cpu time used by
ksoftirqd, while this cpu only runs ksoftirqd/0 (100% in sirq), and has no idle time.

$ps -fp 4 ; mpstat -P 0 1 10 ; ps -fp 4
UID        PID  PPID  C STIME TTY          TIME CMD
root         4     2  1 15:35 ?        00:00:46 [ksoftirqd/0]
Linux 2.6.30-rc5-tip-01595-g6f75dad-dirty (svivoipvnx001)       05/13/2009      _i686_

04:45:01 PM  CPU    %usr   %nice    %sys %iowait    %irq   %soft  %steal  %guest   %idle
04:45:02 PM    0    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00  100.00    0.00    0.00    0.00
04:45:03 PM    0    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00   99.01    0.00    0.00    0.99
04:45:04 PM    0    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00  100.00    0.00    0.00    0.00
04:45:05 PM    0    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00  100.00    0.00    0.00    0.00
04:45:06 PM    0    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00  100.00    0.00    0.00    0.00
04:45:07 PM    0    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00  100.00    0.00    0.00    0.00
04:45:08 PM    0    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00  100.00    0.00    0.00    0.00
04:45:09 PM    0    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00  100.00    0.00    0.00    0.00
04:45:10 PM    0    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00  100.00    0.00    0.00    0.00
04:45:11 PM    0    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00  100.00    0.00    0.00    0.00
Average:       0    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00   99.90    0.00    0.00    0.10
UID        PID  PPID  C STIME TTY          TIME CMD
root         4     2  1 15:35 ?        00:00:49 [ksoftirqd/0]

You can see here time consumed by ksoftirqd/0 suring this 10 seconds time frame is *only* 3 seconds.

Therefore, we cannot trust ps, not with current kernel.

# cat /proc/4/stat ; sleep 10 ; cat /proc/4/stat
4 (ksoftirqd/0) R 2 0 0 0 -1 2216730688 0 0 0 0 0 15347 0 0 15 -5 1 0 6 0 0 4294967295 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2147483647 0 0 0 0 17 0 0 0 0 0 0
4 (ksoftirqd/0) R 2 0 0 0 -1 2216730688 0 0 0 0 0 15670 0 0 15 -5 1 0 6 0 0 4294967295 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2147483647 0 0 0 0 17 0 0 0 0 0 0

> The reason Andrea originally added the softirqds was just that
> if you have very softirq intensive workloads they would tie
> up too much CPU time or not make enough process with the default
> "don't loop too often" heuristics. 
> 
>> We can not rely on irqs coming in when the softirq is raised from
> 
> You can't rely on it, but it happens in near all cases.
> 
> -Andi