[alsa-devel] Clean up of PCM spinlocks
Takashi Iwai
tiwai at suse.de
Tue Mar 13 21:24:13 CET 2012
At Tue, 13 Mar 2012 20:50:00 +0100,
Jaroslav Kysela wrote:
>
> Date 13.3.2012 17:05, Takashi Iwai wrote:
> > At Tue, 13 Mar 2012 16:46:39 +0100,
> > Jaroslav Kysela wrote:
> >>
> >> Date 13.3.2012 16:23, Takashi Iwai wrote:
> >>> At Tue, 13 Mar 2012 16:16:36 +0100,
> >>> Jaroslav Kysela wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>> Date 13.3.2012 16:00, Takashi Iwai wrote:
> >>>>> At Tue, 13 Mar 2012 15:24:11 +0100,
> >>>>> Jaroslav Kysela wrote:
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Date 13.3.2012 11:57, Takashi Iwai wrote:
> >>>>>>> Hi,
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> below is a patch I posted to LKML as the follow up for the lockdep
> >>>>>>> report from Dave Jones. It's a resurrected patch from what I worked
> >>>>>>> on quite ago. Although this fix is suboptimal, I see no better way.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> If this looks OK, I'm going to queue it as a 3.4 material.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> thanks,
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> Takashi
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> ===
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> From: Takashi Iwai <tiwai at suse.de>
> >>>>>>> Subject: [PATCH] ALSA: pcm - Simplify linked PCM substream spinlocks
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> The spinlocks held for PCM substreams have been always messy. For the
> >>>>>>> better concurrent accessibility, we took always the substream's lock
> >>>>>>> first. When substreams are linked, we need a group-wide lock, but
> >>>>>>> this should be applied outside substream's lock. So, we unlock the
> >>>>>>> substream's lock first, then do locks twice.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> This scheme is known to be problematic with lockdep. Maybe because
> >>>>>>> the nested lock isn't marked properly, and partly because the lock and
> >>>>>>> unlock sequences are different (A/B -> A/B).
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> This patch tries to simplify the scheme. Instead of holding the
> >>>>>>> substream's lock, we take the group lock always at first. A drawback
> >>>>>>> of this is that the access to the individual substream in a same group
> >>>>>>> won't be allowed any longer. But, the code looks much easier, and
> >>>>>>> likely less buggy.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> What do you mean by this? I noticed that you switched the behaviour for
> >>>>>> the stream_lock():
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> 1) self_group spinlock is used for single (non-linked) stream
> >>>>>> - same as before
> >>>>>> 2) group.lock spinlock is used for the linked streams
> >>>>>> - the self_group spinlock is used only in the group action
> >>>>>> - the question is why? it seems useless, the
> >>>>>> stream_lock() functions use the allocated group.lock
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Oh yeah, right, this is utterly useless!
> >>>>> I just thought of the mutex case, but in this case, the lock is
> >>>>> avoided anyway.
> >>>>>
> >>>>>> I don't think that this patch will work in the way we expect.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> I believe we should use only group.lock spinlock for the linked streams
> >>>>>> without using the self_group spinlock to make locking work like this:
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> stream_lock(current)
> >>>>>> group_action(current) {
> >>>>>> for s from all_group_substreams {
> >>>>>> if (s != current)
> >>>>>> stream_lock(s);
> >>>>>> }
> >>>>>> .... job ....
> >>>>>> .... group substreams unlock ....
> >>>>>> }
> >>>>>> stream_unlock(current)
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Well, if we think of a single lock, the code would be much
> >>>>> simplified than above.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> The reviewsed patch is below. I left the single-stream version as is
> >>>>> since it's used explicitly in the drain() -- the drain action is
> >>>>> applied to each substream although it's linked.
> >>>>
> >>>> I meant use group->lock in the group_action, see patch bellow.
> >>>
> >>> Hmm, I don't think this works. From linked stream members,
> >>> group->lock points to the very same lock instance. So,
> >>> snd_pcm_action_group() would dead-lock the same lock with your code.
> >>
> >> I see. The problem is that the concurrent but linked streams can take
> >> different first locks for the group locking:
> >>
> >> time 0 time 1
> >> --------------------------------
> >> lock stream 0 -> group lock
> >> lock stream 1 -> group lock
> >>
> >> In this case the condition current != s is not enough. I think that we
> >> have to strictly separate situations when the group lock can be
> >> activated and use different locking scheme there - for example using a
> >> master lock per linked substreams.
> >
> > In my revised patch, group->lock is actually the master lock of the
> > group. This is the only lock applied to the substream.
> >
> > When a stream is linked, it's done in the global write_lock to
> > guarantee that stream is unlocked. Then group->lock is replaced with
> > a real group lock from self_group.lock. So, there is no race among
> > this move.
> >
> >> It seems to me that your proposed patch just removes the spinlocks for
> >> linked substreams which can cause inconsistencies for these streams.
> >
> > Not really. It just uses a single lock for linked streams. There are
> > no longer stream locks once when the stream is linked.
> >
> > This is of course a drawback -- it disallows the concurrent access to
> > linked stream members in some operations. How this is regarded as a
> > serious drawback, is a question of operation styles. If any apps are
> > accessing many streams as a linked stream in realtime manner, and
> > access to each without mmap, then the performance may be worsen. But,
> > this scenario is rather pretty rare, I guess.
> >
> >> Or just a quick idea - what about to track the the group action
> >> collisions? We can use a spinlock protected counter and serialize these
> >> requests in another way (if counter is above one - the CPU should wait
> >> until it becomes one).
> >
> > Well... this sounds way too complex, I'm afraid.
>
> I tried to think about it more. I think that the spinlock reorder is at
> the wrong code position. What about the code bellow. I believe, it
> should guarantee the consistent locking scheme (although the first
> substream lock will stay outside of the group->lock, but it should not
> be an issue).
Unfortunately it doesn't work neither. It's the way of thinking I've
traced, too.
snd_pcm_action() could be called in the context where the stream lock
has been already held, e.g. at stopping the stream from the interrupt
handler. Thus you can't take the group lock over it.
The re-locking in the current code (unlock first then two locks) is a
compromise. It actually works well in practice. But the difference
of lock and unlock sequences is confusing, and the way of checking the
double-lock via spin_trylock() is too tricky.
thanks,
Takashi
> diff --git a/sound/core/pcm_native.c b/sound/core/pcm_native.c
> index 25ed9fe..758a7c0 100644
> --- a/sound/core/pcm_native.c
> +++ b/sound/core/pcm_native.c
> @@ -711,10 +711,12 @@ static int snd_pcm_action_group(struct action_ops
> *ops,
> struct snd_pcm_substream *s1;
> int res = 0;
>
> + spin_lock(&substream->group->lock);
> snd_pcm_group_for_each_entry(s, substream) {
> - if (do_lock && s != substream)
> - spin_lock_nested(&s->self_group.lock,
> - SINGLE_DEPTH_NESTING);
> + if (do_lock && s != substream) {
> + while (!spin_trylock(&s->self_group.lock))
> + /* nothing */ ;
> + }
> res = ops->pre_action(s, state);
> if (res < 0)
> goto _unlock;
> @@ -746,6 +748,7 @@ static int snd_pcm_action_group(struct action_ops *ops,
> break;
> }
> }
> + spin_unlock(&substream->group->lock);
> return res;
> }
>
> @@ -779,13 +782,7 @@ static int snd_pcm_action(struct action_ops *ops,
> int res;
>
> if (snd_pcm_stream_linked(substream)) {
> - if (!spin_trylock(&substream->group->lock)) {
> - spin_unlock(&substream->self_group.lock);
> - spin_lock(&substream->group->lock);
> - spin_lock(&substream->self_group.lock);
> - }
> - res = snd_pcm_action_group(ops, substream, state, 1);
> - spin_unlock(&substream->group->lock);
> + res = snd_pcm_action_group(ops, substream, state);
> } else {
> res = snd_pcm_action_single(ops, substream, state);
> }
> @@ -802,17 +799,7 @@ static int snd_pcm_action_lock_irq(struct
> action_ops *ops,
> int res;
>
> read_lock_irq(&snd_pcm_link_rwlock);
> - if (snd_pcm_stream_linked(substream)) {
> - spin_lock(&substream->group->lock);
> - spin_lock(&substream->self_group.lock);
> - res = snd_pcm_action_group(ops, substream, state, 1);
> - spin_unlock(&substream->self_group.lock);
> - spin_unlock(&substream->group->lock);
> - } else {
> - spin_lock(&substream->self_group.lock);
> - res = snd_pcm_action_single(ops, substream, state);
> - spin_unlock(&substream->self_group.lock);
> - }
> + res = snd_pcm_action(ops, substream, state);
> read_unlock_irq(&snd_pcm_link_rwlock);
> return res;
> }
>
>
> Jaroslav
>
> --
> Jaroslav Kysela <perex at perex.cz>
> Linux Kernel Sound Maintainer
> ALSA Project; Red Hat, Inc.
>
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