Re: [RFC v3 1/1] fs/namespace: remove RCU sync for MNT_DETACH umount

[Jan Kara]

On Fri 28-06-24 10:58:54, Ian Kent wrote:
> 
> On 27/6/24 19:54, Jan Kara wrote:
> > On Thu 27-06-24 09:11:14, Ian Kent wrote:
> > > On 27/6/24 04:47, Matthew Wilcox wrote:
> > > > On Wed, Jun 26, 2024 at 04:07:49PM -0400, Lucas Karpinski wrote:
> > > > > +++ b/fs/namespace.c
> > > > > @@ -78,6 +78,7 @@ static struct kmem_cache *mnt_cache __ro_after_init;
> > > > >    static DECLARE_RWSEM(namespace_sem);
> > > > >    static HLIST_HEAD(unmounted);	/* protected by namespace_sem */
> > > > >    static LIST_HEAD(ex_mountpoints); /* protected by namespace_sem */
> > > > > +static bool lazy_unlock = false; /* protected by namespace_sem */
> > > > That's a pretty ugly way of doing it.  How about this?
> > > Ha!
> > > 
> > > That was my original thought but I also didn't much like changing all the
> > > callers.
> > > 
> > > I don't really like the proliferation of these small helper functions either
> > > but if everyone
> > > 
> > > is happy to do this I think it's a great idea.
> > So I know you've suggested removing synchronize_rcu_expedited() call in
> > your comment to v2. But I wonder why is it safe? I *thought*
> > synchronize_rcu_expedited() is there to synchronize the dropping of the
> > last mnt reference (and maybe something else) - see the comment at the
> > beginning of mntput_no_expire() - and this change would break that?
> 
> Interesting, because of the definition of lazy umount I didn't look closely
> enough at that.
> 
> But I wonder, how exactly would that race occur, is holding the rcu read
> lock sufficient since the rcu'd mount free won't be done until it's
> released (at least I think that's how rcu works).

I'm concerned about a race like:

[path lookup]				[umount -l]
...
path_put()
  mntput(mnt)
    mntput_no_expire(m)
      rcu_read_lock();
      if (likely(READ_ONCE(mnt->mnt_ns))) {
					do_umount()
					  umount_tree()
					    ...
					    mnt->mnt_ns = NULL;
					    ...
					  namespace_unlock()
					    mntput(&m->mnt)
					      mntput_no_expire(mnt)
				              smp_mb();
					      mnt_add_count(mnt, -1);
					      count = mnt_get_count(mnt);
					      if (count != 0) {
						...
						return;
        mnt_add_count(mnt, -1);
        rcu_read_unlock();
        return;
-> KABOOM, mnt->mnt_count dropped to 0 but nobody cleaned up the mount!
      }

And this scenario is exactly prevented by synchronize_rcu() in
namespace_unlock().


								Honza
-- 
Jan Kara <jack@xxxxxxxx>
SUSE Labs, CR