Re: [PATCH] mm/shrinker: do not hold RCU lock in shrinker_debugfs_count_show()

[SeongJae Park]

On Wed, 10 Jun 2026 16:20:48 -0700 Shakeel Butt <shakeel.butt@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Reading the debugfs "count" file of a memcg-aware shrinker can sleep
> inside an RCU read-side critical section:
> 
>   BUG: sleeping function called from invalid context at kernel/cgroup/rstat.c:421
>   RCU nest depth: 1, expected: 0
>    css_rstat_flush
>    mem_cgroup_flush_stats
>    zswap_shrinker_count
>    shrinker_debugfs_count_show
> 
> shrinker_debugfs_count_show() invokes the ->count_objects() callback
> under rcu_read_lock(). The zswap callback flushes memcg stats via
> css_rstat_flush(), which may sleep, so it must not run under RCU.
> 
> The RCU lock is not needed here. mem_cgroup_iter() takes RCU internally
> and returns a memcg holding a css reference (dropped on the next
> iteration or by mem_cgroup_iter_break()), so the memcg stays alive
> without it. The shrinker is kept alive by the open debugfs file:
> shrinker_free() removes the debugfs entries via
> debugfs_remove_recursive(), which waits for in-flight readers to drain,
> before call_rcu(..., shrinker_free_rcu_cb). The sibling "scan" handler
> already invokes the sleeping ->scan_objects() callback with no RCU
> section.
> 
> Drop the rcu_read_lock()/rcu_read_unlock().

All make sense to me, thank you for the nice description and the fix!

> 
> Fixes: 5035ebc644ae ("mm: shrinkers: introduce debugfs interface for memory shrinkers")
> Reported-by: Zenghui Yu <zenghui.yu@xxxxxxxxx>
> Closes: https://lore.kernel.org/all/c052a064-cddb-494f-a0d8-f8a10b4b1c4d@xxxxxxxxx/
> Suggested-by: Nhat Pham <nphamcs@xxxxxxxxx>
> Signed-off-by: Shakeel Butt <shakeel.butt@xxxxxxxxx>

Reviewed-by: SeongJae Park <sj@xxxxxxxxxx>


Thanks,
SJ

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