Re: [PATCH] PCI/IOV: Fix recursive locking deadlock on pci_rescan_remove_lock
From: Sebastian Andrzej Siewior
Date: Mon Feb 09 2026 - 03:30:40 EST
On 2026-02-09 09:57:07 [+0200], Ionut Nechita (Wind River) wrote:
> From: Ionut Nechita <ionut.nechita@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>
> When a PCI device is hot-removed via sysfs (e.g., echo 1 > /sys/.../remove),
> pci_stop_and_remove_bus_device_locked() acquires pci_rescan_remove_lock and
> then recursively walks the bus hierarchy calling driver .remove() callbacks.
>
> If the removed device is a PF with SR-IOV enabled (e.g., i40e, ice), the
> driver's .remove() calls pci_disable_sriov() -> sriov_disable() ->
> sriov_del_vfs() which also tries to acquire pci_rescan_remove_lock.
> Since this is a non-recursive mutex and the same thread already holds it,
> this results in a deadlock.
>
> On PREEMPT_RT kernels, where mutexes are backed by rtmutex with deadlock
> detection, this immediately triggers:
>
> WARNING: CPU: 15 PID: 11730 at kernel/locking/rtmutex.c:1663
> Call Trace:
> mutex_lock+0x47/0x60
> sriov_disable+0x2a/0x100
> i40e_free_vfs+0x415/0x470 [i40e]
> i40e_remove+0x38d/0x3e0 [i40e]
> pci_device_remove+0x3b/0xb0
> device_release_driver_internal+0x193/0x200
> pci_stop_bus_device+0x81/0xb0
> pci_stop_and_remove_bus_device_locked+0x16/0x30
> remove_store+0x79/0x90
>
> On non-RT kernels the same recursive acquisition silently hangs the calling
> process, eventually causing netdev watchdog TX timeout splats.
>
> This affects all drivers that call pci_disable_sriov() from their .remove()
> callback (i40e, ice, and others).
>
> Fix this by tracking the owner of pci_rescan_remove_lock and skipping the
> redundant acquisition in sriov_del_vfs() when the current thread already
> holds it. The VF removal is still serialized correctly because the caller
> already holds the lock.
This looks like the result of commit 05703271c3cdc ("PCI/IOV: Add PCI
rescan-remove locking when enabling/disabling SR-IOV").
> Signed-off-by: Ionut Nechita <ionut.nechita@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sebastian