Re: [GIT PULL] pipe: Notification queue preparation

[Linus Torvalds]

On Thu, Dec 5, 2019 at 9:22 AM David Sterba <dsterba@xxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> I rerun the test again (with a different address where it's stuck), there's
> nothing better I can get from the debug info, it always points to pipe_wait,
> disassembly points to.

Hah. I see another bug.

"pipe_wait()" depends on the fact that all events that wake it up
happen with the pipe lock held.

But we do some of the "do_wakeup()" handling outside the pipe lock now
on the reader side

        __pipe_unlock(pipe);

        /* Signal writers asynchronously that there is more room. */
        if (do_wakeup) {
                wake_up_interruptible_poll(&pipe->wait, EPOLLOUT | EPOLLWRNORM);
                kill_fasync(&pipe->fasync_writers, SIGIO, POLL_OUT);
        }

However, that isn't new to this series _either_, so I don't think
that's it. It does wake up things inside the lock _too_ if it ended up
emptying a whole buffer.

So it could be triggered by timing and behavior changes, but I doubt
this pipe_wait() thing is it either. The fact that it bisects to the
thing that changes things to use head/tail pointers makes me think
there's some other incorrect update or comparison somewhere.

That said, "pipe_wait()" is an abomination. It should use a proper
wait condition and use wait_event(), but the code predates all of
that. I suspect pipe_wait() goes back to the dark ages with the BKL
and no actual races between kernel code.

               Linus