Re: [bug] __blk_mq_run_hw_queue suspicious rcu usage

[David Rientjes]

On Thu, 5 Sep 2019, David Rientjes wrote:

> > > Hi Christoph, Jens, and Ming,
> > > 
> > > While booting a 5.2 SEV-enabled guest we have encountered the following 
> > > WARNING that is followed up by a BUG because we are in atomic context 
> > > while trying to call set_memory_decrypted:
> > 
> > Well, this really is a x86 / DMA API issue unfortunately.  Drivers
> > are allowed to do GFP_ATOMIC dma allocation under locks / rcu critical
> > sections and from interrupts.  And it seems like the SEV case can't
> > handle that.  We have some semi-generic code to have a fixed sized
> > pool in kernel/dma for non-coherent platforms that have similar issues
> > that we could try to wire up, but I wonder if there is a better way
> > to handle the issue, so I've added Tom and the x86 maintainers.
> > 
> > Now independent of that issue using DMA coherent memory for the nvme
> > PRPs/SGLs doesn't actually feel very optional.  We could do with
> > normal kmalloc allocations and just sync it to the device and back.
> > I wonder if we should create some general mempool-like helpers for that.
> > 
> 
> Thanks for looking into this.  I assume it's a non-starter to try to 
> address this in _vm_unmap_aliases() itself, i.e. rely on a purge spinlock 
> to do all synchronization (or trylock if not forced) for 
> purge_vmap_area_lazy() rather than only the vmap_area_lock within it.  In 
> other words, no mutex.
> 
> If that's the case, and set_memory_encrypted() can't be fixed to not need 
> to sleep by changing _vm_unmap_aliases() locking, then I assume dmapool is 
> our only alternative?  I have no idea with how large this should be.
> 

Brijesh and Tom, we currently hit this any time we boot an SEV enabled 
Ubuntu 18.04 guest; I assume that guest kernels, especially those of such 
major distributions, are expected to work with warnings and BUGs when 
certain drivers are enabled.

If the vmap purge lock is to remain a mutex (any other reason that 
unmapping aliases can block?) then it appears that allocating a dmapool 
is the only alternative.  Is this something that you'll be addressing 
generically or do we need to get buy-in from the maintainers of this 
specific driver?