Re: [BUG]locking/rwsem: only clean RWSEM_FLAG_HANDOFF when already set

From: Waiman Long
Date: Sun Nov 07 2021 - 14:52:44 EST


On 11/7/21 10:24, Waiman Long wrote:
On 11/7/21 04:01, Hillf Danton wrote:
On Sat, 6 Nov 2021 23:25:38 -0400 Waiman Long wrote:
On 11/6/21 08:39, 马振华 wrote:
Dear longman,

recently , i find a issue which rwsem count is negative value, it
happened always when a task try to get the lock
with __down_write_killable , then it is killed

this issue happened like this

             CPU2         CPU4
     task A[reader]     task B[writer]
     down_read_killable[locked]
     sem->count=0x100
             down_write_killable
             sem->count=0x102[wlist not empty]
     up_read
     count=0x2
             sig kill received
     down_read_killable
     sem->count=0x102[wlist not empty]
             goto branch out_nolock:
list_del(&waiter.list);
wait list is empty
sem->count-RWSEM_FLAG_HANDOFF
sem->count=0xFE
     list_empty(&sem->wait_list) is TRUE
      sem->count andnot RWSEM_FLAG_WAITERS
       sem->count=0xFC
     up_read
     sem->count -= 0x100
     sem->count=0xFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFC
     DEBUG_RWSEMS_WARN_ON(tmp < 0, sem);

so sem->count will be negative after writer is killed
i think if flag RWSEM_FLAG_HANDOFF is not set, we shouldn't clean it
Thanks for reporting this possible race condition.

However, I am still trying to figure how it is possible to set the
wstate to WRITER_HANDOFF without actually setting the handoff bit as
well. The statement sequence should be as follows:

wstate = WRITER_HANDOFF;
raw_spin_lock_irq(&sem->wait_lock);
if (rwsem_try_write_lock(sem, wstate))
raw_spin_unlock_irq(&sem->wait_lock);
   :
if (signal_pending_state(state, current))
     goto out_nolock

The rwsem_try_write_lock() function will make sure that we either
acquire the lock and clear handoff or set the handoff bit. This should
be done before we actually check for signal. I do think that it is
Given that WRITER_HANDOFF makes no sure that RWSEM_FLAG_HANDOFF is set in
wsem_try_write_lock(), the flag should be cleared only by the setter to
avoid count underflow.

Hillf

probably safer to use atomic_long_andnot to clear the handoff bit
instead of using atomic_long_add().

I did have a tentative patch to address this issue which is somewhat similar to your approach. However, I would like to further investigate the exact mechanics of the race condition to make sure that I won't miss a latent bug somewhere else in the rwsem code.

I still couldn't figure how this race condition can happen. However, I do discover that it is possible to leave rwsem with no waiter but handoff bit set if we kill or interrupt all the waiters in the wait queue. I have just sent out a patch to address that concern, but it should be able to handle this race condition as well if it really happens.

Cheers,
Longman