rr-debugger / rr-debugger/rr

Syscallbuf desched scheme does not work if desched is uninterruptible

Open
#2,542 4 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

Dominant language
C++
Stars
10.7k
Forks
662
Avg merge
2d 3h
Merged PRs (30d)
2

Description

When running on a network or FUSE file system, many operations such as read/write will result in uninterruptible disk sleep. As a result, our syscallbuf desched mechanism does not work, because the desched signal cannot interrupt the system call. This is observable as either performance degradation or a hang (e.g. if the FUSE server is in the same rr session). I'm thinking it might be possible to have the desched signal be delivered to some other task instead, either the tracer (with some carefulness to make sure they're not lost around calls to waitpid) or some dummy ptraced task (that would then cause waitpid to exit in the relevant cases). Thoughts?

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

The issue names no files, tests, or entry points. Start by reproducing the syscallbuf desched failure on a network or FUSE filesystem and trace how the desched signal and waitpid interact; done means uninterruptible operations no longer cause the reported performance degradation or hang.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
cpp, linux
Domain
devtools, operating-systems
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
25/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.