Date:   Thu, 25 Jan 2018 15:52:06 +0800
From:   Jia-Ju Bai <baijiaju1990@...il.com>
To:     Al Viro <viro@...IV.linux.org.uk>
Cc:     axboe@...nel.dk, linux-block@...r.kernel.org,
        linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] block: blk-mq-sched: Replace GFP_ATOMIC with GFP_KERNEL
 in blk_mq_sched_assign_ioc



On 2018/1/25 12:16, Al Viro wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 25, 2018 at 11:13:56AM +0800, Jia-Ju Bai wrote:
>
>> I have checked the given call chain, and find that nvme_dev_disable in
>> nvme_timeout calls mutex_lock that can sleep.
>> Thus, I suppose this call chain is not in atomic context.
> ... or it is broken.
>
>> Besides, how do you find that "function (nvme_timeout()) strongly suggests
>> that it *is* meant to be called from bloody atomic context"?
>> I check the comments in nvme_timeout, and do not find related description...
> Anything that reads registers for controller state presumably won't be
> happy if it can happen in parallel with other threads poking the same
> hardware.  Not 100% guaranteed, but it's a fairly strong sign that there's
> some kind of exclusion between whatever's submitting requests / handling
> interrupts and the caller of that thing.  And such exclusion is likely
> to be spin_lock_irqsave()-based.
>
> Again, that does not _prove_ it's called from atomic contexts, but does
> suggest such possibility.
>
> Looking through the callers of that method, blk_abort_request() certainly
> *is* called from under queue lock.  Different drivers, though.  No idea
> if nvme_timeout() blocking case is broken - I'm not familiar with that
> code.  Question should go to nvme maintainers...
>
> However, digging through other call chains, there's this:
> drivers/md/dm-mpath.c:530:      clone = blk_get_request(q, rq->cmd_flags | REQ_NOMERGE, GFP_ATOMIC);
> in multipath_clone_and_map(), aka. ->clone_and_map_rq(), called at
> drivers/md/dm-rq.c:480: r = ti->type->clone_and_map_rq(ti, rq, &tio->info, &clone);
> in map_request(), which is called from dm_mq_queue_rq(), aka ->queue_rq(),
> which is called from blk_mq_dispatch_rq_list(), called from
> blk_mq_do_dispatch_sched(), called from blk_mq_sched_dispatch_requests(),
> called under rcu_read_lock().  Not a context where you want GFP_KERNEL
> allocations...
>
>> By the way, do you mean that I should add "My tool has proved that this
>> function is never called in atomic context" in the description?
> I mean that proof itself should be at least outlined.  Crediting the tool
> for finding the proof is fine *IF* it's done along wiht the proof itself.
>
> You want to convince the people applying the patch that it is correct.
> Leaving out something trivial to verify is fine - "foo_bar_baz() has
> no callers" doesn't require grep output + quoting the area around each
> instance to prove that all of them are in the comments, etc.; readers
> can bloody well check the accuracy of that claim themselves.  This
> kind of analysis, however, is decidedly *NOT* trivial to verify from
> scratch.
>
> Moreover, if what you've proven is that for each call chain leading
> to that place there's a blocking operation nearby, there is still
> a possibility that some of those *are* called while in non-blocking
> context.  In that case you've found real bugs, and strictly speaking
> your change doesn't break correct code.  However, it does not make
> the change itself correct - if you have something like
> 	enter non-blocking section
> 	.....
> 	in very unusual cases grab a mutex (or panic, or...)
> 	.....
> 	do GFP_ATOMIC allocation
> 	.....
> 	leave non-blocking section
> changing that to GFP_KERNEL will turn "we deadlock in very hard to
> hit case" into "we deadlock easily"...
>
> At the very least, I'd like to see those cutoffs - i.e. the places
> that already could block on the callchains.  You might very well
> have found actual bugs there.

Okay, thanks for your detailed explanation :)
I admit that my report here is not correct, and I will improve my tool.


Thanks,
Jia-Ju Bai

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