Re: fs: lockup on rename_mutex in fs/dcache.c:1035

From: Al Viro
Date: Sun Oct 26 2014 - 17:57:50 EST


On Sun, Oct 26, 2014 at 07:13:32PM +0000, Al Viro wrote:
> The comment is not correct. dentry_kill() won't screw the pointer to
> parent; it will, however, screw the pointer to next sibling.
>
> It used to screw the pointer to parent (which is what the first part of
> condition was about). After Nick's series back in January 2011 that
> has stopped being true. However, dentry_kill() does
> list_del(&dentry->d_u.d_child). Which means that we can't continue
> past that point if it has happened. Trond has noticed the breakage
> a bit later and added explicit check for ->d_flags, but the damage
> was more extensive - Nick had missed the restarts-on-killed logics
> hidden in the check for changed ->d_parent and assumed that it's
> all about renames, meaning that once rename_lock has been taken exclusive
> we won't have restarts at all. With restart-on-killed restored that
> wasn't true anymore, invalidating the assumption that we only get to
> rename_retry without rename_lock held exclusive. With deadlocks happening
> if we ever get there on such pass.

Actually, it's even worse than just list_del() possibly screwing .next -
that could be worked around by use of __list_del() (and skipping them
until we come to one that isn't marked DCACHE_DENTRY_KILLED). Note that
d_child shares memory with d_rcu, and _that_ is really nasty - if
__dentry_kill() has progressed to dentry_free(), we have ->d_u.d_child.next
hopelessly trashed.

OTOH, we could make d_rcu share memory with d_alias instead. Hrm...
OK, then we'd have
rcu_read_lock();
ascend:
if (this_parent != parent) {
struct dentry *child = this_parent;
this_parent = child->d_parent;

spin_unlock(&child->d_lock);
spin_lock(&this_parent->d_lock);

if (need_seqretry(&rename_lock, seq)) {
spin_unlock(&this_parent->d_lock);
rcu_read_unlock();
goto rename_retry;
}
next = child->d_child.next;
while (unlikely(child->d_flags & DCACHE_DENTRY_KILLED)) {
if (next == &this_parent.d_subdirs)
goto ascend;
child = list_entry(next, struct dentry, d_child);
next = next->next;
}
rcu_read_unlock();
goto resume;
}
rcu_read_unlock();
if (need_seqretry(&rename_lock, seq)) {
spin_unlock(&this_parent->d_lock);
goto rename_retry;
}
in d_walk(), __list_del() instead of list_del() in __dentry_kill(), d_u.d_child
turning into d_child everywhere, while d_alias turns into d_u.d_alias...

It looks like that way we would get no retries on the second pass. Comments?
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/