block, bfq: consider also in_service_entity to state whether an entity is active

Groups of BFQ queues are represented by generic entities in BFQ. When
a queue belonging to a parent entity is deactivated, the parent entity
may need to be deactivated too, in case the deactivated queue was the
only active queue for the parent entity. This deactivation may need to
be propagated upwards if the entity belongs, in its turn, to a further
higher-level entity, and so on. In particular, the upward propagation
of deactivation stops at the first parent entity that remains active
even if one of its child entities has been deactivated.

To decide whether the last non-deactivation condition holds for a
parent entity, BFQ checks whether the field next_in_service is still
not NULL for the parent entity, after the deactivation of one of its
child entity. If it is not NULL, then there are certainly other active
entities in the parent entity, and deactivations can stop.

Unfortunately, this check misses a corner case: if in_service_entity
is not NULL, then next_in_service may happen to be NULL, although the
parent entity is evidently active. This happens if: 1) the entity
pointed by in_service_entity is the only active entity in the parent
entity, and 2) according to the definition of next_in_service, the
in_service_entity cannot be considered as next_in_service. See the
comments on the definition of next_in_service for details on this
second point.

Hitting the above corner case causes crashes.

To address this issue, this commit:
1) Extends the above check on only next_in_service to controlling both
next_in_service and in_service_entity (if any of them is not NULL,
then no further deactivation is performed)
2) Improves the (important) comments on how next_in_service is defined
and updated; in particular it fixes a few rather obscure paragraphs

Reported-by: Eric Wheeler <bfq-sched@lists.ewheeler.net>
Reported-by: Rick Yiu <rick_yiu@htc.com>
Reported-by: Tom X Nguyen <tom81094@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Paolo Valente <paolo.valente@linaro.org>
Tested-by: Eric Wheeler <bfq-sched@lists.ewheeler.net>
Tested-by: Rick Yiu <rick_yiu@htc.com>
Tested-by: Laurentiu Nicola <lnicola@dend.ro>
Tested-by: Tom X Nguyen <tom81094@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe <axboe@kernel.dk>

1 files changed, 17 insertions, 5 deletions

diff --git a/block/bfq-iosched.h b/block/bfq-iosched.h
index 63e771ab56d8..859f0a8c97c8 100644
--- a/block/bfq-iosched.h
+++ b/block/bfq-iosched.h
@@ -71,17 +71,29 @@ struct bfq_service_tree {
  *
  * bfq_sched_data is the basic scheduler queue.  It supports three
  * ioprio_classes, and can be used either as a toplevel queue or as an
- * intermediate queue on a hierarchical setup.  @next_in_service
- * points to the active entity of the sched_data service trees that
- * will be scheduled next. It is used to reduce the number of steps
- * needed for each hierarchical-schedule update.
+ * intermediate queue in a hierarchical setup.
  *
  * The supported ioprio_classes are the same as in CFQ, in descending
  * priority order, IOPRIO_CLASS_RT, IOPRIO_CLASS_BE, IOPRIO_CLASS_IDLE.
  * Requests from higher priority queues are served before all the
  * requests from lower priority queues; among requests of the same
  * queue requests are served according to B-WF2Q+.
- * All the fields are protected by the queue lock of the containing bfqd.
+ *
+ * The schedule is implemented by the service trees, plus the field
+ * @next_in_service, which points to the entity on the active trees
+ * that will be served next, if 1) no changes in the schedule occurs
+ * before the current in-service entity is expired, 2) the in-service
+ * queue becomes idle when it expires, and 3) if the entity pointed by
+ * in_service_entity is not a queue, then the in-service child entity
+ * of the entity pointed by in_service_entity becomes idle on
+ * expiration. This peculiar definition allows for the following
+ * optimization, not yet exploited: while a given entity is still in
+ * service, we already know which is the best candidate for next
+ * service among the other active entitities in the same parent
+ * entity. We can then quickly compare the timestamps of the
+ * in-service entity with those of such best candidate.
+ *
+ * All fields are protected by the lock of the containing bfqd.
  */
 struct bfq_sched_data {
 	/* entity in service */