posix-timers: Prefer delivery of signals to the current thread

POSIX timers using the CLOCK_PROCESS_CPUTIME_ID clock prefer the main
thread of a thread group for signal delivery. However, this has a
significant downside: it requires waking up a potentially idle thread.

Instead, prefer to deliver signals to the current thread (in the same
thread group) if SIGEV_THREAD_ID is not set by the user. This does not
change guaranteed semantics, since POSIX process CPU time timers have
never guaranteed that signal delivery is to a specific thread (without
SIGEV_THREAD_ID set).

The effect is that queueing the signal no longer wakes up potentially idle
threads, and the kernel is no longer biased towards delivering the timer
signal to any particular thread (which better distributes the timer signals
esp. when multiple timers fire concurrently).

Suggested-by: Oleg Nesterov <oleg@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Dmitry Vyukov <dvyukov@google.com>
Signed-off-by: Marco Elver <elver@google.com>
Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Reviewed-by: Oleg Nesterov <oleg@redhat.com>
Acked-by: Peter Zijlstra (Intel) <peterz@infradead.org>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20230316123028.2890338-1-elver@google.com

1 files changed, 18 insertions, 3 deletions

diff --git a/kernel/signal.c b/kernel/signal.c
index 8cb28f1df294..8f6330f0e9ca 100644
--- a/kernel/signal.c
+++ b/kernel/signal.c
@@ -1003,8 +1003,7 @@ static void complete_signal(int sig, struct task_struct *p, enum pid_type type)
 	/*
 	 * Now find a thread we can wake up to take the signal off the queue.
 	 *
-	 * If the main thread wants the signal, it gets first crack.
-	 * Probably the least surprising to the average bear.
+	 * Try the suggested task first (may or may not be the main thread).
 	 */
 	if (wants_signal(sig, p))
 		t = p;
@@ -1970,8 +1969,24 @@ int send_sigqueue(struct sigqueue *q, struct pid *pid, enum pid_type type)
 
 	ret = -1;
 	rcu_read_lock();
+
+	/*
+	 * This function is used by POSIX timers to deliver a timer signal.
+	 * Where type is PIDTYPE_PID (such as for timers with SIGEV_THREAD_ID
+	 * set), the signal must be delivered to the specific thread (queues
+	 * into t->pending).
+	 *
+	 * Where type is not PIDTYPE_PID, signals must be delivered to the
+	 * process. In this case, prefer to deliver to current if it is in
+	 * the same thread group as the target process, which avoids
+	 * unnecessarily waking up a potentially idle task.
+	 */
 	t = pid_task(pid, type);
-	if (!t || !likely(lock_task_sighand(t, &flags)))
+	if (!t)
+		goto ret;
+	if (type != PIDTYPE_PID && same_thread_group(t, current))
+		t = current;
+	if (!likely(lock_task_sighand(t, &flags)))
 		goto ret;
 
 	ret = 1; /* the signal is ignored */