NAME

       pip_stress - Priority Inheritance with processes

SYNOPSIS

       pip_stress

DESCRIPTION

       This  program  demonstrates  the technique of using priority inheritance (PI) mutexes with
       processes instead of threads.  The way to do this is to obtain some  shared  memory  -  in
       this  case  with  mmap  that  backs  a  pthread_mutex_t  since  this will support PI.  Pay
       particular  attention  to  how  this  is  intialized  to  support   processes.    Function
       init_shared_pthread_mutex()    does    this    by   setting   the   pthread_mutexattr   to
       PTHREAD_PROCESS_SHARED and the mutex protocol to PTHREAD_PRIO_INHERIT.  In this program we
       purposely  try  to  invoke a classic priority inversion.  A low priority process grabs the
       mutex and does some work.  A high priority process comes a long and is blocked  since  the
       mutex  is  taken.  A medium priority process that doesn't require the mutex then takes the
       processor. Because the processes are restricted to one cpu,  the  low  priority  processes
       never  makes  any  progress  because the medium priority process runs in an infinite loop.
       This is a priority inversion because  the  medium  priority  process  is  running  at  the
       expensive  of  the high priority process. However, since we have used PRIO_INHERIT and are
       running on a machine that supports preemption, the high priority process  will  lend  it's
       priority  to  the low priority process which will preempt the medium priority process. The
       low priority process will then release the mutex  which  the  high  priority  process  can
       obtain.  When  the high priority process gets to run it kills the medium priority process.
       The state structure keeps track of the progress. Although this program is set up to likely
       trigger  an  inversion, there is no guarantee that scheduling will make that happen. After
       the program completes it reports whether a priority inversion occurred or not.  In  either
       case this program demonstrates how to use priority inheritance mutexes with processes.  In
       fact, you would be better off to avoid scenarios in which a priority inversion  occurs  if
       possible  -  this  program  tries  to  trigger them just to show that it works. If you are
       having difficulty triggering an inversion, merely increase the time that the low  priority
       process  sleeps while holding the lock. (usleep); Also note that you have to run as a user
       with permission to change scheduling priorities.

AUTHOR

       pip_stress was written by John Kacur <jkacur at redhat.com>

       This manual page was also written by John Kacur

                                        September 17, 2018                          PIP STRESS(8)