286deb7ec0
On PREEMPT_RT, rw_semaphore and rwlock_t locks are unfair to writers. Readers can indefinitely acquire the lock unless the writer fully acquired the lock, which might never happen if there is always a reader in the critical section owning the lock. Mel Gorman reported that since LTP-20220121 the dio_truncate test case went from having 1 reader to having 16 readers and that number of readers is sufficient to prevent the down_write ever succeeding while readers exist. Eventually the test is killed after 30 minutes as a failure. Mel proposed a timeout to limit how long a writer can be blocked until the reader is forced into the slowpath. Thomas argued that there is no added value by providing this timeout. From a PREEMPT_RT point of view, there are no critical rw_semaphore or rwlock_t locks left where the reader must be preferred. Mitigate indefinite writer starvation by forcing the READER into the slowpath once the WRITER attempts to acquire the lock. Reported-by: Mel Gorman <mgorman@techsingularity.net> Signed-off-by: Sebastian Andrzej Siewior <bigeasy@linutronix.de> Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de> Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org> Acked-by: Mel Gorman <mgorman@techsingularity.net> Link: https://lore.kernel.org/877cwbq4cq.ffs@tglx Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20230321161140.HMcQEhHb@linutronix.de Cc: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Linux kernel
============
There are several guides for kernel developers and users. These guides can
be rendered in a number of formats, like HTML and PDF. Please read
Documentation/admin-guide/README.rst first.
In order to build the documentation, use ``make htmldocs`` or
``make pdfdocs``. The formatted documentation can also be read online at:
https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/
There are various text files in the Documentation/ subdirectory,
several of them using the Restructured Text markup notation.
Please read the Documentation/process/changes.rst file, as it contains the
requirements for building and running the kernel, and information about
the problems which may result by upgrading your kernel.