[PATCH] eal/unix: allow creating thread with real-time priority

[Bruce Richardson]

On Wed, Oct 25, 2023 at 03:15:49PM +0200, Thomas Monjalon wrote:
> 24/10/2023 18:04, Stephen Hemminger:
> > On Tue, 24 Oct 2023 15:55:13 +0200
> > Morten Brørup <mb at smartsharesystems.com> wrote:
> > 
> > > > 
> > > >    4. It MAY be used by preemptible multi-producer and/or preemptible multi-
> > > > consumer pthreads whose scheduling policy are all SCHED_OTHER(cfs), SCHED_IDLE
> > > > or SCHED_BATCH. User SHOULD be aware of the performance penalty before using
> > > > it.
> > > > 
> > > > -  5. It MUST not be used by multi-producer/consumer pthreads, whose
> > > > scheduling policies are SCHED_FIFO or SCHED_RR.
> > > > +  5. It MUST not be used by multi-producer/consumer pthreads
> > > > +     whose scheduling policies are ``SCHED_FIFO``
> > > > +     or ``SCHED_RR`` (``RTE_THREAD_PRIORITY_REALTIME_CRITICAL``).  
> > > 
> > > Do the RTS or HTS ring modes make any difference here?
> > > 
> > > Anyway, I agree that real-time priority should not be forbidden on Unix.
> > > 
> > > Acked-by: Morten Brørup <mb at smartsharesystems.com>
> > 
> > Please add a big warning message in the rte_thread.c and the documentation
> > to describe the problem. Need to have the "you have been warned" action.
> 
> Yes I can add more warnings.
> 
> > Use of RT priority is incompatible with 100% poll mode as is typically done
> > in DPDK applications. A real time thread has higher priority than other necessary
> > kernel threads on the same CPU. Therefore if the RT thread never sleeps, critical
> > system actions such as delayed writes, network packet processing and timer updates
> > will not happen which makes the system unstable.
> 
> Yes, and it is shown by the test on loongarch:
> DPDK:fast-tests / threads_autotest        TIMEOUT        80.01s
> http://mails.dpdk.org/archives/test-report/2023-October/488760.html
> 
> I'll try to pass the test by adding a sleep in the test thread.
> 

"sched_yield()" rather than sleep perhaps? Might better convey the
intention of the call.