[PATCH] md raid: fix hang when stopping arrays with metadata through dm-raid

From: Heinz Mauelshagen

Date: Thu Sep 18 2025 - 09:42:56 EST


When using device-mapper's dm-raid target, stopping a RAID array can cause the
system to hang under specific conditions.

This occurs when:

- A dm-raid managed device tree is suspended from top to bottom
(the top-level RAID device is suspended first, followed by its
underlying metadata and data devices)

- The top-level RAID device is then removed

The hang happens because removing the top-level device triggers md_stop() from the
dm-raid destructor. This function attempts to flush the write-intent bitmap, which
requires writing bitmap superblocks to the metadata sub-devices. However, since
these metadata devices are already suspended, the write operations cannot complete,
causing the system to hang.

Fix:

- Prevent bitmap flushing when md_stop() is called from dm-raid contexts
and avoid a quiescing/unquescing cycle which could also cause I/O

- Avoid any I/O operations that might occur during the quiesce/unquiesce process in md_stop()

This ensures that RAID array teardown can complete successfully even when the
underlying devices are in a suspended state.

Signed-off-by: Heinz Mauelshagen <heinzm@xxxxxxxxxx>
---
drivers/md/md.c | 12 +++++++-----
1 file changed, 7 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-)

diff --git a/drivers/md/md.c b/drivers/md/md.c
index 4e033c26fdd4..53e15bdd9ab2 100644
--- a/drivers/md/md.c
+++ b/drivers/md/md.c
@@ -6541,12 +6541,14 @@ static void __md_stop_writes(struct mddev *mddev)
{
timer_delete_sync(&mddev->safemode_timer);

- if (mddev->pers && mddev->pers->quiesce) {
- mddev->pers->quiesce(mddev, 1);
- mddev->pers->quiesce(mddev, 0);
- }
+ if (!mddev_is_dm(mddev)) {
+ if (mddev->pers && mddev->pers->quiesce) {
+ mddev->pers->quiesce(mddev, 1);
+ mddev->pers->quiesce(mddev, 0);
+ }

- mddev->bitmap_ops->flush(mddev);
+ mddev->bitmap_ops->flush(mddev);
+ }

if (md_is_rdwr(mddev) &&
((!mddev->in_sync && !mddev_is_clustered(mddev)) ||
--
2.51.0