Re: [PATCH] dm cache: fix race affecting dirty block count

From: Pranith Kumar
Date: Sun Aug 03 2014 - 00:57:43 EST


On 08/03/2014 12:46 AM, Pranith Kumar wrote:
> On 08/02/2014 10:10 PM, Pranith Kumar wrote:
>> Corrently adding Anssi this time.
>>
>> On Sat, Aug 2, 2014 at 10:00 PM, Pranith Kumar <bobby.prani@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>> Hello Anssi, Joe, Mike,
>>>
>>> I just found your patch in the latest rc and wanted to ask a few
>>> questions. I am not sure how this patch helps at all other than luck in
>>> that dm_cblock_t type is of type int32_t, which should guarantee that it
>>> is atomic on most platforms. Which begs the question, what platform did
>>> you encounter this problem?
>>>
>>> The patch purports to solve a race condition by making use of atomic_t.
>>> I am not sure that is enough. If indeed there is a race you need to use
>>> smp_mb__{before/after}_atomic() for both your uses of atomic_inc() and
>>> atomic_set().
>>>
>>> Also I have a concern about why this mail was not CC'ed on LKML. I had
>>> to go to some difficulty in finding this patch. So please CC LKML for
>>> such patches.
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> --
>>> Pranith
>>>
>>> -- Begin forwarded Message --
>>>
>>>
>>> nr_dirty is updated without locking, causing it to drift so that it is
>>> non-zero (either a small positive integer, or a very large one when an
>>> underflow occurs) even when there are no actual dirty blocks.
>>>
>>> Fix that by using an atomic type for nr_dirty.
>>>
>>> Signed-off-by: Anssi Hannula <anssi hannula iki fi>
>>> Cc: Joe Thornber <ejt redhat com>
>>> Cc: stable vger kernel org

I found one more location being incorrectly referenced. Please find a fixed
patch below. Also I think we will need to revert the previous patch since it
clearly does not fix anything if there were races.


From: Pranith Kumar <bobby.prani@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 3 Aug 2014 00:53:20 -0400
Subject: [PATCH 1/1] dm cache: Fix incorrect assignment to pointer

Signed-off-by: Pranith Kumar <bobby.prani@xxxxxxxxx>
---
drivers/md/dm-cache-target.c | 16 ++++++++--------
1 file changed, 8 insertions(+), 8 deletions(-)

diff --git a/drivers/md/dm-cache-target.c b/drivers/md/dm-cache-target.c
index 2c63326..49e47e7 100644
--- a/drivers/md/dm-cache-target.c
+++ b/drivers/md/dm-cache-target.c
@@ -1765,11 +1765,11 @@ static void destroy(struct cache *cache)
if (cache->wq)
destroy_workqueue(cache->wq);

- if (cache->dirty_bitset)
- free_bitset(cache->dirty_bitset);
+ if (cache.dirty_bitset)
+ free_bitset(cache.dirty_bitset);

- if (cache->discard_bitset)
- free_bitset(cache->discard_bitset);
+ if (cache.discard_bitset)
+ free_bitset(cache.discard_bitset);

if (cache->copier)
dm_kcopyd_client_destroy(cache->copier);
@@ -2269,16 +2269,16 @@ static int cache_create(struct cache_args *ca, struct cache **result)

r = -ENOMEM;
atomic_set(&cache->nr_dirty, 0);
- cache->dirty_bitset = alloc_bitset(from_cblock(cache->cache_size));
- if (!cache->dirty_bitset) {
+ cache.dirty_bitset = alloc_bitset(from_cblock(cache->cache_size));
+ if (!cache.dirty_bitset) {
*error = "could not allocate dirty bitset";
goto bad;
}
clear_bitset(cache->dirty_bitset, from_cblock(cache->cache_size));

cache->discard_nr_blocks = cache->origin_blocks;
- cache->discard_bitset = alloc_bitset(from_oblock(cache->discard_nr_blocks));
- if (!cache->discard_bitset) {
+ cache.discard_bitset = alloc_bitset(from_oblock(cache->discard_nr_blocks));
+ if (!cache.discard_bitset) {
*error = "could not allocate discard bitset";
goto bad;
}
--
1.9.1
--
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