The NOHZ patch contains a check for softirqs pending when a CPU goes idle.
The BUG is unrelated to NOHZ, it just was made visible by the NOHZ patch.
The BUG showed up mainly on P4 / hyperthreading enabled machines which lead
the investigations into the wrong direction in the first place. The real
cause is in cond_resched_softirq():
cond_resched_softirq() is enabling softirqs without invoking the softirq
daemon when softirqs are pending. This leads to the warning message in the
NOHZ idle code:
t1 runs softirq disabled code on CPU#0
interrupt happens, softirq is raised, but deferred (softirqs disabled)
t1 calls cond_resched_softirq()
enables softirqs via _local_bh_enable()
calls schedule()
t2 runs
t1 is migrated to CPU#1
t2 is done and invokes idle()
NOHZ detects the pending softirq
Fix: change _local_bh_enable() to local_bh_enable() so the softirq
daemon is invoked.
Thanks to Anant Nitya for debugging this with great patience !
Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de> Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu> Cc: <stable@kernel.org> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>