Re: LOCKDEP: 3.9-rc1: mount.nfs/4272 still has locks held!

[Jeff Layton]

On Mon, 4 Mar 2013 22:08:34 +0000
"Myklebust, Trond" <Trond.Myklebust@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> On Mon, 2013-03-04 at 21:53 +0100, Oleg Nesterov wrote:
> > On 03/04, Mandeep Singh Baines wrote:
> > >
> > > The problem is that freezer_count() calls try_to_freeze(). In this
> > > case, try_to_freeze() is not really adding any value.
> > 
> > Well, I tend to agree.
> > 
> > If a task calls __refrigerator() holding a lock which another freezable
> > task can wait for, this is not freezer-friendly.
> > 
> > freezable_schedule/freezer_do_not_count/etc not only means "I won't be
> > active if freezing()", it should also mean "I won't block suspend/etc".
> 
> If suspend for some reason requires a re-entrant mount, then yes, I can
> see how it might be a problem that we're holding a mount-related lock.
> The question is why is that necessary?
> 
> > OTOH, I understand that probably it is not trivial to change this code
> > to make it freezer-friendly. But at least  I disagree with "push your
> > problems onto others".
> 
> That code can't be made freezer-friendly if it isn't allowed to hold
> basic filesystem-related locks across RPC calls. A number of those RPC
> calls do things that need to be protected by VFS or MM-level locks.
> i.e.: lookups, file creation/deletion, page fault in/out, ...
>  
> IOW: the problem would need to be solved differently, possibly by adding
> a new FIFREEZE-like call to allow the filesystem to quiesce itself
> _before_ NetworkManager pulls the rug out from underneath it. There
> would still be plenty of corner cases to keep people entertained (e.g.
> the server goes down before the quiesce call is invoked) but at least
> the top 90% of cases would be solved.
> 

Ok, I think I'm starting to get it. It doesn't necessarily need a
reentrant mount or anything like that. Consider this case (which is not
even that unlikely):

Suppose there are two tasks calling unlink() on files in the same NFS
directory.

First task takes the i_mutex on the parent directory and goes to ask
the server to remove the file. Second task calls unlink just
afterward and blocks on the parent's i_mutex.

Now, a suspend event comes in and freezes the first task while it's
waiting on the response. It still holds the parent's i_mutex. Freezer
now gets to the second task and can't freeze it because the sleep on
that mutex isn't freezable.

So, not a deadlock per-se in this case but it does prevent the freezer
from running to completion. I don't see any way to solve it though w/o
making all mutexes freezable. Note that I don't think this is really
limited to NFS either -- a lot of other filesystems will have similar
problems: CIFS, some FUSE variants, etc...

-- 
Jeff Layton <jlayton@xxxxxxxxxx>
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