Re: [PATCH v2 11/11] powerpc/mm/book3s64/pgtable: Uses counting method to skip serializing

From: Leonardo Bras
Date: Mon Sep 23 2019 - 15:41:23 EST


On Mon, 2019-09-23 at 11:14 -0700, John Hubbard wrote:
> On 9/23/19 10:25 AM, Leonardo Bras wrote:
> [...]
> That part is all fine, but there are no run-time memory barriers in the
> atomic_inc() and atomic_dec() additions, which means that this is not
> safe, because memory operations on CPU 1 can be reordered. It's safe
> as shown *if* there are memory barriers to keep the order as shown:
>
> CPU 0 CPU 1
> ------ --------------
> atomic_inc(val) (no run-time memory barrier!)
> pmd_clear(pte)
> if (val)
> run_on_all_cpus(): IPI
> local_irq_disable() (also not a mem barrier)
>
> READ(pte)
> if(pte)
> walk page tables
>
> local_irq_enable() (still not a barrier)
> atomic_dec(val)
>
> free(pte)
>
> thanks,

This is serialize:

void serialize_against_pte_lookup(struct mm_struct *mm)
{
smp_mb();
if (running_lockless_pgtbl_walk(mm))
smp_call_function_many(mm_cpumask(mm), do_nothing,
NULL, 1);
}

That would mean:

CPU 0 CPU 1
------ --------------
atomic_inc(val)
pmd_clear(pte)
smp_mb()
if (val)
run_on_all_cpus(): IPI
local_irq_disable()

READ(pte)
if(pte)
walk page tables

local_irq_enable() (still not a barrier)
atomic_dec(val)

By https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/memory-barriers.txt :
'If you need all the CPUs to see a given store at the same time, use
smp_mb().'

Is it not enough?
Do you suggest adding 'smp_mb()' after atomic_{inc,dec} ?

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