Re: [PATCH V3 1/1] Drivers: hv: vmbus: Fix a bug in vmbus_establish_gpadl()

[Jeremiah Mahler]

KY Srinivasan,

On Mon, Dec 15, 2014 at 07:00:45AM +0000, KY Srinivasan wrote:
> 
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Jeremiah Mahler [mailto:jmmahler@xxxxxxxxx]
> > Sent: Wednesday, December 10, 2014 6:10 PM
> > To: KY Srinivasan
> > Cc: gregkh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx; linux-kernel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx;
> > devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx; olaf@xxxxxxxxx; apw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx;
> > jasowang@xxxxxxxxxx; mcb30@xxxxxxxx
> > Subject: Re: [PATCH V3 1/1] Drivers: hv: vmbus: Fix a bug in
> > vmbus_establish_gpadl()
> > 
> > K. Y. Srinivasan,
> > 
> > On Wed, Dec 10, 2014 at 05:13:00PM -0800, K. Y. Srinivasan wrote:
> > > Correctly compute the local (gpadl) handle.
> > 
> > This description is still too sparse for me.  How was it computed before and
> > why was this incorrect?  Pretend like you are trying to explain your patch to
> > someone who has no idea what you did.
> > 
> > > I would like to thank Michael Brown <mcb30@xxxxxxxx> for seeing this bug.
> > >
> > > Signed-off-by: K. Y. Srinivasan <kys@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > > Reported-by: Michael Brown <mcb30@xxxxxxxx>
> > > ---
> > > Changes in V2: Added the Reported-by tag.
> > > Changes in V3: Cleaned up the commit log.
> > >
> > >  drivers/hv/channel.c |    4 ++--
> > >  1 files changed, 2 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
> > >
> > > diff --git a/drivers/hv/channel.c b/drivers/hv/channel.c index
> > > 433f72a..c76ffbe 100644
> > > --- a/drivers/hv/channel.c
> > > +++ b/drivers/hv/channel.c
> > > @@ -366,8 +366,8 @@ int vmbus_establish_gpadl(struct vmbus_channel
> > *channel, void *kbuffer,
> > >  	unsigned long flags;
> > >  	int ret = 0;
> > >
> > > -	next_gpadl_handle =
> > atomic_read(&vmbus_connection.next_gpadl_handle);
> > > -	atomic_inc(&vmbus_connection.next_gpadl_handle);
> > > +	next_gpadl_handle =
> > > +
> > 	(atomic_inc_return(&vmbus_connection.next_gpadl_handle) - 1);
> > >
> > Tell me if I understand this correctly.
> > 
> > Before it read the handle and incremented it.
> > 
> >   y = x + 1
> > 
> > Now it reads the handle, increments it, then decrements it.
> > 
> >   y = (x + 1) - 1 = x
> 
> This code can be executed concurrently on multiple CPUs. We want to ensure that each call to
> establish gpadl gets a unique local handle. The earlier code was buggy in that we would read the
> handle and then atomically increment it. Thus, multiple CPUs could read the identical current
> value which would be their local handle. What we want is the ability to atomically read and increment
> the value - this would ensure that each caller got a unique value even if they executed the code
> concurrently on multiple CPUs. The API atomic_inc_return(), atomically increments and returns the
> incremented value. We locally decrement this value to emulate the logic of "read the current value and
> atomically increment the value.
> 
> Hope this helps,
> 
> K. Y
> > 
[...]

So to avoid concurrency issues you used a single atomic operation
instead of two separate operations.  That make sense.  But it still
doesn't explain why you changed the calculation by subtracting 1.

-- 
- Jeremiah Mahler
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