In message <E181s3M-0004C7-00@starship> you write:
> (Warning, this is one of those reply-to-every-point posts, read on if you
> have masochistic tendencies.)
Yes, whip me harder.
> On Wednesday 16 October 2002 08:11, Rusty Russell wrote:
> > It needs to be turned off when dealing with any interface which might
> > be used by one of the hard modules. Which is pretty bad.
>
> As far as I can see, preemption only has to be disabled during the
> synchronize_kernel phase of unloading that one module, and this requirement
> is inherited neither by dependant or depending modules.
No, someone could already have been preempted before you start
synchronize_kernel().
> > > Conceptually, are there any outstanding issues with "hard"
> > > way of unloading modules, assuming we can use the TRY_INC way[1] for
> > > "easy" modules? One I don't recall being discussed, is the inherent
> > > difficulty of unhooking an interface like LSM, one function at a time.
> >
> > Without preempt, it was relatively easy (my initial code preceeded
> > preempt). With preempt, unless you touch the scheduler (I have code
> > for that too, Ingo doesn't like it anyway), a module can't control its
> > own reference counts.
>
> The current proposal touches the scheduler only in the slow path of
> preempt_schedule, does it not? It's hard to see what the objection to that
> would be. By the way, do you when I say "schedule on every cpu", is that
> exactly equivalent to your synchronize_kernel?
Yes, my original version does just that. The version in the kernel at
the moment (2.5.43) is functionally equivalent.
> > Either way, how do you return "Pretend I wasn't here" in general, if
> > the module is being unloaded? Only the infrastructure knows what to
> > do.
> >
> > If a module cannot control its own reference counts, every exported
> > interface which can sleep needs to do the try_inc_modcount thing, or a
> > module which uses it cannot be unloaded.
>
> But this question goes away if we get our preempt-off switch, no?
Not really. If the hook disables preemption before calling in, it
might as well simply do try_inc_mod_count() and be done with it.
ie. either way, we have to modify the hook: the module cannot control
its own reference counts.
> > Now, there remains a subtle problem with the try_inc_mod_count
> > approach in general. It is the "spurious failure" problem, where
> > eg. a notifier cannot inc the module count, and so does not call the
> > registered notifier, but the module is still being initialized *OR* is
> > in the middle of an attempt to remove the module (which fails, and the
> > module is restored to "life").
>
> For pure counting-style modules, it's easy to avoid this problem: the module
> is placed in the can't-increment state if and only if the current count is
> zero, and from that point on we know the unload will either succeed or fail
> with an error.
Still a race between the zero check and the can't-increment state
setting. This is what my current code does: rmmod itself checks (if
/proc/modules available), then the kernel sets the module to
can't-increment, then checks again. If the non-blocking flag is set,
it then re-animates the module and fails, otherwise it waits.
BTW, current patchset (2.5.43):
http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/rusty/patches/Misc/kbuild_object.patch.gz
http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/rusty/patches/Module/implicit-init-removal.patch.gz
http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/rusty/patches/Module/everyone-needs-init.patch.gz
http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/rusty/patches/Module/module.patch.gz
http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/rusty/patches/Module/module-i386.patch.gz
> > Will this be a problem in general? I don't think so, since I couldn't
> > find an example, but it's possible.
>
> Since it's easy to avoid, why leave the fuzz there?
>
> Things get more interesting with (the proposed) rmmod -f. In this case
> some as-yet-undefined mechanism would try to, say, unmount all the
> filesystems using a given module. It's just too hard and too much work to
> try do the shy suitor thing here, and determine beforehand if all the
> unmounts will be successful. The easy way out is just to say "yes,
> rmmod -f may be unsuccessful but still change the system state, deal with
> it". An even easier way is just to put rmmod -f on the back burner for
> the time being.
I have two variants of this. First is the "wait" mentioned above, so
the module will eventually be removed (my latest patch, above, allows
^C to interrupt this). The second is the "die-mother-fucker-die"
version, which taints the kernel and just removes the damn thing. For
most people, this is better than a reboot, and will usually "work".
http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/rusty/patches/Module/force-unload.patch.gz
[ Doesn't apply currently, needs updating ]
> > The major advantage of this scheme is the simplicity for module
> > authors (for the vast majority, no change). Given the complete dogs
> > breakfast most module authors made of the current module count scheme,
> > that's a HUGE bonus.
>
> Yes, well, for "easy" modules, all the interfaces that are on the table
> or in use are simple. Hard modules require some care on the part of the
> author, but we knew that. IMHO, the important thing is to be able to state
> the rules clearly.
Agreed. I wrote a document to enumerate the conditions. I will
revise it today as I update the rest of my patches to 2.5.43...
Cheers!
Rusty.
-- Anyone who quotes me in their sig is an idiot. -- Rusty Russell. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Oct 23 2002 - 22:00:30 EST