On Fri, 10 Apr 2015 14:36:34 +0200
Sebastian Andrzej Siewior [off-list ref] wrote:

Subject: [PATCH] kernel/irq_work: fix no_hz deadlock

Invoking NO_HZ's irq_work callback from timer irq is not working very
well if the callback decides to invoke hrtimer_cancel():

|hrtimer_try_to_cancel+0x55/0x5f
|hrtimer_cancel+0x16/0x28
|tick_nohz_restart+0x17/0x72
|__tick_nohz_full_check+0x8e/0x93
|nohz_full_kick_work_func+0xe/0x10
|irq_work_run_list+0x39/0x57
|irq_work_tick+0x60/0x67
|update_process_times+0x57/0x67
|tick_sched_handle+0x4a/0x59
|tick_sched_timer+0x3b/0x64
|__run_hrtimer+0x7a/0x149
|hrtimer_interrupt+0x1cc/0x2c5

and here we deadlock while waiting for the lock which we are holding.
To fix this I'm doing the same thing that upstream is doing: is the
irq_work dedicated IRQ and use it only for what is marked as "hirq"
which should only be the FULL_NO_HZ related work.

I'm backporting this to the stable releases, and I'm a bit worried
about the above comment. The new Scheduler IPI code uses work queues and
requires it to be done in a hard irq.

-- Steve