Revert "softirq: Let ksoftirqd do its job"
authorPaolo Abeni <pabeni@redhat.com>
Mon, 8 May 2023 06:17:44 +0000 (08:17 +0200)
committerThomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Tue, 9 May 2023 19:50:27 +0000 (21:50 +0200)
commitd15121be7485655129101f3960ae6add40204463
tree8dc777f0bc09684d1ae6e48cbaca7381f2dd8d28
parentac9a78681b921877518763ba0e89202254349d1b
Revert "softirq: Let ksoftirqd do its job"

This reverts the following commits:

  4cd13c21b207 ("softirq: Let ksoftirqd do its job")
  3c53776e29f8 ("Mark HI and TASKLET softirq synchronous")
  1342d8080f61 ("softirq: Don't skip softirq execution when softirq thread is parking")

in a single change to avoid known bad intermediate states introduced by a
patch series reverting them individually.

Due to the mentioned commit, when the ksoftirqd threads take charge of
softirq processing, the system can experience high latencies.

In the past a few workarounds have been implemented for specific
side-effects of the initial ksoftirqd enforcement commit:

commit 1ff688209e2e ("watchdog: core: make sure the watchdog_worker is not deferred")
commit 8d5755b3f77b ("watchdog: softdog: fire watchdog even if softirqs do not get to run")
commit 217f69743681 ("net: busy-poll: allow preemption in sk_busy_loop()")
commit 3c53776e29f8 ("Mark HI and TASKLET softirq synchronous")

But the latency problem still exists in real-life workloads, see the link
below.

The reverted commit intended to solve a live-lock scenario that can now be
addressed with the NAPI threaded mode, introduced with commit 29863d41bb6e
("net: implement threaded-able napi poll loop support"), which is nowadays
in a pretty stable status.

While a complete solution to put softirq processing under nice resource
control would be preferable, that has proven to be a very hard task. In
the short term, remove the main pain point, and also simplify a bit the
current softirq implementation.

Signed-off-by: Paolo Abeni <pabeni@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Tested-by: Jason Xing <kerneljasonxing@gmail.com>
Reviewed-by: Jakub Kicinski <kuba@kernel.org>
Reviewed-by: Eric Dumazet <edumazet@google.com>
Reviewed-by: Sebastian Andrzej Siewior <bigeasy@linutronix.de>
Cc: "Paul E. McKenney" <paulmck@kernel.org>
Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
Cc: netdev@vger.kernel.org
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/netdev/305d7742212cbe98621b16be782b0562f1012cb6.camel@redhat.com
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/57e66b364f1b6f09c9bc0316742c3b14f4ce83bd.1683526542.git.pabeni@redhat.com
kernel/softirq.c