Hello!
If I remember correctly, one of you asked for a way to shorten RCU
grace periods so that KASAN would have a better chance of detecting bugs
such as pointers being leaked out of RCU read-side critical sections.
I am finally starting entering and testing code for this, but realized
that I had forgotten a couple of things:
1. I don't remember exactly who asked, but I suspect that it was
Kostya. I am using his Reported-by as a placeholder for the
moment, but please let me know if this should be adjusted.
2. Although this work is necessary to detect situtions where
call_rcu() is used to initiate a grace period, there already
exists a way to make short grace periods that are initiated by
synchronize_rcu(), namely, the rcupdate.rcu_expedited kernel
boot parameter. This will cause all calls to synchronize_rcu()
to act like synchronize_rcu_expedited(), resulting in about 2-3
orders of magnitude reduction in grace-period latency on small
systems (say 16 CPUs).
In addition, I plan to make a few other adjustments that will
increase the probability of KASAN spotting a pointer leak even in the
rcupdate.rcu_expedited case.
But if you would like to start this sort of testing on current mainline,
rcupdate.rcu_expedited is your friend!
Thanx, Paul
