Re: [RFC] Move the memory_notifier out of the memory_hotplug lock

From: Nathan Zimmer
Date: Thu Feb 06 2014 - 11:09:50 EST


On Wed, Feb 05, 2014 at 03:20:07PM -0800, David Rientjes wrote:
> On Wed, 5 Feb 2014, Nathan Zimmer wrote:
>
> > > That looks a little problematic, what happens if a nid is being brought
> > > online and a registered callback does something like allocate resources
> > > for the arg->status_change_nid and the above two hunks of this patch end
> > > up racing?
> > >
> > > Before, a registered callback would be guaranteed to see either a
> > > MEMORY_CANCEL_ONLINE or MEMORY_ONLINE after it has already done
> > > MEMORY_GOING_ONLINE.
> > >
> > > With your patch, we could race and see one cpu doing MEMORY_GOING_ONLINE,
> > > another cpu doing MEMORY_GOING_ONLINE, and then MEMORY_ONLINE and
> > > MEMORY_CANCEL_ONLINE in either order.
> > >
> > > So I think this patch will break most registered callbacks that actually
> > > depend on lock_memory_hotplug(), it's a coarse lock for that reason.
> >
> > Since the argument being passed in is the pfn and size it would be an issue
> > only if two threads attepted to online the same piece of memory. Right?
> >
>
> No, I'm referring to registered callbacks that provide a resource for
> arg->status_change_nid. An example would be the callbacks I added to the
> slub allocator in slab_memory_callback(). If we are now able to get a
> racy MEM_GOING_ONLINE -> MEM_GOING_ONLINE -> MEM_ONLINE ->
> MEM_CANCEL_ONLINE, which is possible with your patch _and_ the node being
> successfully onlined at the end, then we get a NULL pointer dereference
> because the kmem_cache_node for each slab cache has been freed.
>
Ok I think I see now. In my testing I had only been onlining parts of nodes.
So all nodes were already had at least some memory online from the beginning.

> > That seems very unlikely but if it can happen it needs to be protected
> > against.
> >
>
> The protection for registered memory online or offline callbacks is
> lock_memory_hotplug() which is eliminated with your patch, the locking for
> memory_notify() that you're citing is irrelevant.

Would the race still exist if we left the position of the locks alone and
broke it up by nid, something like this?


diff --git a/mm/memory_hotplug.c b/mm/memory_hotplug.c
index ee37657..e797e21 100644
--- a/mm/memory_hotplug.c
+++ b/mm/memory_hotplug.c
@@ -913,7 +913,9 @@ int __ref online_pages(unsigned long pfn, unsigned long nr_pages, int online_typ
int ret;
struct memory_notify arg;

- lock_memory_hotplug();
+ nid = page_to_nid(pfn_to_page(pfn));
+
+ lock_memory_hotplug(nid);
/*
* This doesn't need a lock to do pfn_to_page().
* The section can't be removed here because of the
@@ -923,19 +925,19 @@ int __ref online_pages(unsigned long pfn, unsigned long nr_pages, int online_typ

if ((zone_idx(zone) > ZONE_NORMAL || online_type == ONLINE_MOVABLE) &&
!can_online_high_movable(zone)) {
- unlock_memory_hotplug();
+ unlock_memory_hotplug(nid);
return -1;
}

if (online_type == ONLINE_KERNEL && zone_idx(zone) == ZONE_MOVABLE) {
if (move_pfn_range_left(zone - 1, zone, pfn, pfn + nr_pages)) {
- unlock_memory_hotplug();
+ unlock_memory_hotplug(nid);
return -1;
}
}
if (online_type == ONLINE_MOVABLE && zone_idx(zone) == ZONE_MOVABLE - 1) {
if (move_pfn_range_right(zone, zone + 1, pfn, pfn + nr_pages)) {
- unlock_memory_hotplug();
+ unlock_memory_hotplug(nid);
return -1;
}
}
@@ -947,13 +949,11 @@ int __ref online_pages(unsigned long pfn, unsigned long nr_pages, int online_typ
arg.nr_pages = nr_pages;
node_states_check_changes_online(nr_pages, zone, &arg);

- nid = page_to_nid(pfn_to_page(pfn));
-
ret = memory_notify(MEM_GOING_ONLINE, &arg);
ret = notifier_to_errno(ret);
if (ret) {
memory_notify(MEM_CANCEL_ONLINE, &arg);
- unlock_memory_hotplug();
+ unlock_memory_hotplug(nid);
return ret;
}
/*
@@ -978,7 +978,7 @@ int __ref online_pages(unsigned long pfn, unsigned long nr_pages, int online_typ
(((unsigned long long) pfn + nr_pages)
<< PAGE_SHIFT) - 1);
memory_notify(MEM_CANCEL_ONLINE, &arg);
- unlock_memory_hotplug();
+ unlock_memory_hotplug(nid);
return ret;
}

@@ -1006,7 +1006,7 @@ int __ref online_pages(unsigned long pfn, unsigned long nr_pages, int online_typ

if (onlined_pages)
memory_notify(MEM_ONLINE, &arg);
- unlock_memory_hotplug();
+ unlock_memory_hotplug(nid);

return 0;
}

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