Re: [PATCH 0/3] Fix for KSZ DSA switch shutdown

[Vladimir Oltean]

On Thu, Sep 09, 2021 at 03:19:52PM +0200, Lino Sanfilippo wrote:
> > Do you see similar things on your 5.10 kernel?
> 
> For the master device is see
> 
> lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Sep  9 14:10 /sys/class/net/eth0/device/consumer:spi:spi3.0 -> ../../../virtual/devlink/platform:fd580000.ethernet--spi:spi3.0

So this is the worst of the worst, we have a device link but it doesn't help.

Where the device link helps is here:

__device_release_driver
	while (device_links_busy(dev))
		device_links_unbind_consumers(dev);

but during dev_shutdown, device_links_unbind_consumers does not get called
(actually I am not even sure whether it should).

I've reproduced your issue by making this very simple change:

diff --git a/drivers/net/ethernet/freescale/enetc/enetc_pf.c b/drivers/net/ethernet/freescale/enetc/enetc_pf.c
index 60d94e0a07d6..ec00f34cac47 100644
--- a/drivers/net/ethernet/freescale/enetc/enetc_pf.c
+++ b/drivers/net/ethernet/freescale/enetc/enetc_pf.c
@@ -1372,6 +1372,7 @@ static struct pci_driver enetc_pf_driver = {
 	.id_table = enetc_pf_id_table,
 	.probe = enetc_pf_probe,
 	.remove = enetc_pf_remove,
+	.shutdown = enetc_pf_remove,
 #ifdef CONFIG_PCI_IOV
 	.sriov_configure = enetc_sriov_configure,
 #endif

on my DSA master driver. This is what the genet driver has "special".

I was led into grave error by Documentation/driver-api/device_link.rst,
which I've based my patch on, where it clearly says that device links
are supposed to help with shutdown ordering (how?!).

So the question is, why did my DSA trees get torn down on shutdown?
Basically the short answer is that my SPI controller driver does
implement .shutdown, and calls the same code path as the .remove code,
which calls spi_unregister_controller which removes all SPI children..

When I added this device link, one of the main objectives was to not
modify all DSA drivers. I was certain based on the documentation that
device links would help, now I'm not so sure anymore.

So what happens is that the DSA master attempts to unregister its net
device on .shutdown, but DSA does not implement .shutdown, so it just
sits there holding a reference (supposedly via dev_hold, but where from?!)
to the master, which makes netdev_wait_allrefs to wait and wait.

I need more time for the denial phase to pass, and to understand what
can actually be done. I will also be away from the keyboard for the next
few days, so it might take a while. Your patches obviously offer a
solution only for KSZ switches, we need something more general. If I
understand your solution, it works not by virtue of there being any
shutdown ordering guarantee at all, but simply due to the fact that
DSA's .shutdown hook gets called eventually, and the reference to the
master gets freed eventually, which unblocks the unregister_netdevice
call from the master. I don't yet understand why DSA holds a long-term
reference to the master, that's one thing I need to figure out.