tick: Clear broadcast active bit when switching to oneshot

The first cpu which switches from periodic to oneshot mode switches
also the broadcast device into oneshot mode. The broadcast device
serves as a backup for per cpu timers which stop in deeper
C-states. To avoid starvation of the cpus which might be in idle and
depend on broadcast mode it marks the other cpus as broadcast active
and sets the brodcast expiry value of those cpus to the next tick.

The oneshot mode broadcast bit for the other cpus is sticky and gets
only cleared when those cpus exit idle. If a cpu was not idle while
the bit got set in consequence the bit prevents that the broadcast
device is armed on behalf of that cpu when it enters idle for the
first time after it switched to oneshot mode.

In most cases that goes unnoticed as one of the other cpus has usually
a timer pending which keeps the broadcast device armed with a short
timeout. Now if the only cpu which has a short timer active has the
bit set then the broadcast device will not be armed on behalf of that
cpu and will fire way after the expected timer expiry. In the case of
Christians bug report it took ~145 seconds which is about half of the
wrap around time of HPET (the limit for that device) due to the fact
that all other cpus had no timers armed which expired before the 145
seconds timeframe.

The solution is simply to clear the broadcast active bit
unconditionally when a cpu switches to oneshot mode after the first
cpu switched the broadcast device over. It's not idle at that point
otherwise it would not be executing that code.

[ I fundamentally hate that broadcast crap. Why the heck thought some
  folks that when going into deep idle it's a brilliant concept to
  switch off the last device which brings the cpu back from that
  state? ]

Thanks to Christian for providing all the valuable debug information!

Reported-and-tested-by: Christian Hoffmann <email@christianhoffmann.info>
Cc: John Stultz <johnstul@us.ibm.com>
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/%3Calpine.LFD.2.02.1105161105170.3078%40ionos%3E
Cc: stable@kernel.org
Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>

1 files changed, 11 insertions, 1 deletions

diff --git a/kernel/time/tick-broadcast.c b/kernel/time/tick-broadcast.c
index da800ffa810c..723c7637e55a 100644
--- a/kernel/time/tick-broadcast.c
+++ b/kernel/time/tick-broadcast.c
@@ -522,10 +522,11 @@ static void tick_broadcast_init_next_event(struct cpumask *mask,
  */
 void tick_broadcast_setup_oneshot(struct clock_event_device *bc)
 {
+        int cpu = smp_processor_id();
+
         /* Set it up only once ! */
         if (bc->event_handler != tick_handle_oneshot_broadcast) {
                 int was_periodic = bc->mode == CLOCK_EVT_MODE_PERIODIC;
-                int cpu = smp_processor_id();
 
                 bc->event_handler = tick_handle_oneshot_broadcast;
                 clockevents_set_mode(bc, CLOCK_EVT_MODE_ONESHOT);
@@ -551,6 +552,15 @@ void tick_broadcast_setup_oneshot(struct clock_event_device *bc)
                         tick_broadcast_set_event(tick_next_period, 1);
                 } else
                         bc->next_event.tv64 = KTIME_MAX;
+        } else {
+                /*
+                 * The first cpu which switches to oneshot mode sets
+                 * the bit for all other cpus which are in the general
+                 * (periodic) broadcast mask. So the bit is set and
+                 * would prevent the first broadcast enter after this
+                 * to program the bc device.
+                 */
+                tick_broadcast_clear_oneshot(cpu);
         }
 }