From: Ingo Molnar Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2008 19:45:15 +0000 (+0100) Subject: sched: prevent divide by zero error in cpu_avg_load_per_task, update X-Git-Tag: v2.6.28-rc7~41^2 X-Git-Url: http://pilppa.com/gitweb/?a=commitdiff_plain;h=af6d596fd603219b054c1c90fb16672a9fd441bd;p=linux-2.6-omap-h63xx.git sched: prevent divide by zero error in cpu_avg_load_per_task, update Regarding the bug addressed in: 4cd4262: sched: prevent divide by zero error in cpu_avg_load_per_task Linus points out that the fix is not complete: > There's nothing that keeps gcc from deciding not to reload > rq->nr_running. > > Of course, in _practice_, I don't think gcc ever will (if it decides > that it will spill, gcc is likely going to decide that it will > literally spill the local variable to the stack rather than decide to > reload off the pointer), but it's a valid compiler optimization, and > it even has a name (rematerialization). > > So I suspect that your patch does fix the bug, but it still leaves the > fairly unlikely _potential_ for it to re-appear at some point. > > We have ACCESS_ONCE() as a macro to guarantee that the compiler > doesn't rematerialize a pointer access. That also would clarify > the fact that we access something unsafe outside a lock. So make sure our nr_running value is immutable and cannot change after we check it for nonzero. Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar --- diff --git a/kernel/sched.c b/kernel/sched.c index 700aa9a1413..b7480fb5c3d 100644 --- a/kernel/sched.c +++ b/kernel/sched.c @@ -1453,7 +1453,7 @@ static int task_hot(struct task_struct *p, u64 now, struct sched_domain *sd); static unsigned long cpu_avg_load_per_task(int cpu) { struct rq *rq = cpu_rq(cpu); - unsigned long nr_running = rq->nr_running; + unsigned long nr_running = ACCESS_ONCE(rq->nr_running); if (nr_running) rq->avg_load_per_task = rq->load.weight / nr_running;