| RCU Torture Test Operation |
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| CONFIG_RCU_TORTURE_TEST |
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| The CONFIG_RCU_TORTURE_TEST config option is available for all RCU |
| implementations. It creates an rcutorture kernel module that can |
| be loaded to run a torture test. The test periodically outputs |
| status messages via printk(), which can be examined via the dmesg |
| command (perhaps grepping for "torture"). The test is started |
| when the module is loaded, and stops when the module is unloaded. |
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| CONFIG_RCU_TORTURE_TEST_RUNNABLE |
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| It is also possible to specify CONFIG_RCU_TORTURE_TEST=y, which will |
| result in the tests being loaded into the base kernel. In this case, |
| the CONFIG_RCU_TORTURE_TEST_RUNNABLE config option is used to specify |
| whether the RCU torture tests are to be started immediately during |
| boot or whether the /proc/sys/kernel/rcutorture_runnable file is used |
| to enable them. This /proc file can be used to repeatedly pause and |
| restart the tests, regardless of the initial state specified by the |
| CONFIG_RCU_TORTURE_TEST_RUNNABLE config option. |
| |
| You will normally -not- want to start the RCU torture tests during boot |
| (and thus the default is CONFIG_RCU_TORTURE_TEST_RUNNABLE=n), but doing |
| this can sometimes be useful in finding boot-time bugs. |
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| MODULE PARAMETERS |
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| This module has the following parameters: |
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| fqs_duration Duration (in microseconds) of artificially induced bursts |
| of force_quiescent_state() invocations. In RCU |
| implementations having force_quiescent_state(), these |
| bursts help force races between forcing a given grace |
| period and that grace period ending on its own. |
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| fqs_holdoff Holdoff time (in microseconds) between consecutive calls |
| to force_quiescent_state() within a burst. |
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| fqs_stutter Wait time (in seconds) between consecutive bursts |
| of calls to force_quiescent_state(). |
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| irqreaders Says to invoke RCU readers from irq level. This is currently |
| done via timers. Defaults to "1" for variants of RCU that |
| permit this. (Or, more accurately, variants of RCU that do |
| -not- permit this know to ignore this variable.) |
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| nfakewriters This is the number of RCU fake writer threads to run. Fake |
| writer threads repeatedly use the synchronous "wait for |
| current readers" function of the interface selected by |
| torture_type, with a delay between calls to allow for various |
| different numbers of writers running in parallel. |
| nfakewriters defaults to 4, which provides enough parallelism |
| to trigger special cases caused by multiple writers, such as |
| the synchronize_srcu() early return optimization. |
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| nreaders This is the number of RCU reading threads supported. |
| The default is twice the number of CPUs. Why twice? |
| To properly exercise RCU implementations with preemptible |
| read-side critical sections. |
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| shuffle_interval |
| The number of seconds to keep the test threads affinitied |
| to a particular subset of the CPUs, defaults to 3 seconds. |
| Used in conjunction with test_no_idle_hz. |
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| stat_interval The number of seconds between output of torture |
| statistics (via printk()). Regardless of the interval, |
| statistics are printed when the module is unloaded. |
| Setting the interval to zero causes the statistics to |
| be printed -only- when the module is unloaded, and this |
| is the default. |
| |
| stutter The length of time to run the test before pausing for this |
| same period of time. Defaults to "stutter=5", so as |
| to run and pause for (roughly) five-second intervals. |
| Specifying "stutter=0" causes the test to run continuously |
| without pausing, which is the old default behavior. |
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| test_no_idle_hz Whether or not to test the ability of RCU to operate in |
| a kernel that disables the scheduling-clock interrupt to |
| idle CPUs. Boolean parameter, "1" to test, "0" otherwise. |
| Defaults to omitting this test. |
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| torture_type The type of RCU to test: "rcu" for the rcu_read_lock() API, |
| "rcu_sync" for rcu_read_lock() with synchronous reclamation, |
| "rcu_bh" for the rcu_read_lock_bh() API, "rcu_bh_sync" for |
| rcu_read_lock_bh() with synchronous reclamation, "srcu" for |
| the "srcu_read_lock()" API, "sched" for the use of |
| preempt_disable() together with synchronize_sched(), |
| and "sched_expedited" for the use of preempt_disable() |
| with synchronize_sched_expedited(). |
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| verbose Enable debug printk()s. Default is disabled. |
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| OUTPUT |
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| The statistics output is as follows: |
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| rcu-torture: --- Start of test: nreaders=16 stat_interval=0 verbose=0 |
| rcu-torture: rtc: 0000000000000000 ver: 1916 tfle: 0 rta: 1916 rtaf: 0 rtf: 1915 |
| rcu-torture: Reader Pipe: 1466408 9747 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 |
| rcu-torture: Reader Batch: 1464477 11678 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 |
| rcu-torture: Free-Block Circulation: 1915 1915 1915 1915 1915 1915 1915 1915 1915 1915 0 |
| rcu-torture: --- End of test |
| |
| The command "dmesg | grep torture:" will extract this information on |
| most systems. On more esoteric configurations, it may be necessary to |
| use other commands to access the output of the printk()s used by |
| the RCU torture test. The printk()s use KERN_ALERT, so they should |
| be evident. ;-) |
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| The entries are as follows: |
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| o "rtc": The hexadecimal address of the structure currently visible |
| to readers. |
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| o "ver": The number of times since boot that the rcutw writer task |
| has changed the structure visible to readers. |
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| o "tfle": If non-zero, indicates that the "torture freelist" |
| containing structure to be placed into the "rtc" area is empty. |
| This condition is important, since it can fool you into thinking |
| that RCU is working when it is not. :-/ |
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| o "rta": Number of structures allocated from the torture freelist. |
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| o "rtaf": Number of allocations from the torture freelist that have |
| failed due to the list being empty. |
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| o "rtf": Number of frees into the torture freelist. |
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| o "Reader Pipe": Histogram of "ages" of structures seen by readers. |
| If any entries past the first two are non-zero, RCU is broken. |
| And rcutorture prints the error flag string "!!!" to make sure |
| you notice. The age of a newly allocated structure is zero, |
| it becomes one when removed from reader visibility, and is |
| incremented once per grace period subsequently -- and is freed |
| after passing through (RCU_TORTURE_PIPE_LEN-2) grace periods. |
| |
| The output displayed above was taken from a correctly working |
| RCU. If you want to see what it looks like when broken, break |
| it yourself. ;-) |
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| o "Reader Batch": Another histogram of "ages" of structures seen |
| by readers, but in terms of counter flips (or batches) rather |
| than in terms of grace periods. The legal number of non-zero |
| entries is again two. The reason for this separate view is that |
| it is sometimes easier to get the third entry to show up in the |
| "Reader Batch" list than in the "Reader Pipe" list. |
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| o "Free-Block Circulation": Shows the number of torture structures |
| that have reached a given point in the pipeline. The first element |
| should closely correspond to the number of structures allocated, |
| the second to the number that have been removed from reader view, |
| and all but the last remaining to the corresponding number of |
| passes through a grace period. The last entry should be zero, |
| as it is only incremented if a torture structure's counter |
| somehow gets incremented farther than it should. |
| |
| Different implementations of RCU can provide implementation-specific |
| additional information. For example, SRCU provides the following: |
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| srcu-torture: rtc: f8cf46a8 ver: 355 tfle: 0 rta: 356 rtaf: 0 rtf: 346 rtmbe: 0 |
| srcu-torture: Reader Pipe: 559738 939 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 |
| srcu-torture: Reader Batch: 560434 243 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 |
| srcu-torture: Free-Block Circulation: 355 354 353 352 351 350 349 348 347 346 0 |
| srcu-torture: per-CPU(idx=1): 0(0,1) 1(0,1) 2(0,0) 3(0,1) |
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| The first four lines are similar to those for RCU. The last line shows |
| the per-CPU counter state. The numbers in parentheses are the values |
| of the "old" and "current" counters for the corresponding CPU. The |
| "idx" value maps the "old" and "current" values to the underlying array, |
| and is useful for debugging. |
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| Similarly, sched_expedited RCU provides the following: |
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| sched_expedited-torture: rtc: d0000000016c1880 ver: 1090796 tfle: 0 rta: 1090796 rtaf: 0 rtf: 1090787 rtmbe: 0 nt: 27713319 |
| sched_expedited-torture: Reader Pipe: 12660320201 95875 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 |
| sched_expedited-torture: Reader Batch: 12660424885 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 |
| sched_expedited-torture: Free-Block Circulation: 1090795 1090795 1090794 1090793 1090792 1090791 1090790 1090789 1090788 1090787 0 |
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| USAGE |
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| The following script may be used to torture RCU: |
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| #!/bin/sh |
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| modprobe rcutorture |
| sleep 100 |
| rmmod rcutorture |
| dmesg | grep torture: |
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| The output can be manually inspected for the error flag of "!!!". |
| One could of course create a more elaborate script that automatically |
| checked for such errors. The "rmmod" command forces a "SUCCESS" or |
| "FAILURE" indication to be printk()ed. |