linux-ext4 - Re: [PATCH -V4] ext4: Fix lockdep recursive locking warning

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Date:	Sun, 23 Nov 2008 22:03:49 +0530
From:	"Aneesh Kumar K.V" <aneesh.kumar@...ux.vnet.ibm.com>
To:	Theodore Tso <tytso@....EDU>
Cc:	cmm@...ibm.com, sandeen@...hat.com, linux-ext4@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH -V4] ext4: Fix lockdep recursive locking warning

On Sat, Nov 22, 2008 at 09:49:11PM -0500, Theodore Tso wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 22, 2008 at 03:46:25PM -0500, Theodore Tso wrote:
> > On Fri, Nov 21, 2008 at 10:10:46PM +0530, Aneesh Kumar K.V wrote:
> > > Indicate that the group locks can be taken in loop.
> > 
> > I've been looking at this patch more closely, and I think there's a
> > major problem here.
> 
> OK, after looking at this in yet more detail (and having changed
> planes in Dallas :-), I am more than ever convinced this patch is not
> rightq.  We have an rw_sem for each block group, grp->alloc_sem, which
> is allocated in groups of meta blockgroups.  The whole reason why we
> should worry about keeping them in the same class is we should worry
> about is if for some reason, the multiblock allocator happens to
> allocate two block group's alloc_sem, but one does them out of order
> (say, bg 4, then bg 2, while another does bg 2, then 4), we would get
> a dead lock.
> 
> I'm guessing that what caused the problem for you was
> ext4_mb_init_group(), which if you are using 1k filesystems, tries to
> grab multiple grp->alloc_sem's.  In each place where we find those, we
> need to use down_write_nested --- see Documentation/lockdep-design.txt.  

Correct

> 
> If there are any other places in mballoc.c which grabs multiple
> alloc_sem's at the same time, we'll have to use define new subclasses.

No. That is the only call site.

How about the below patch. We can have more than 2 groups in a page
depending on the page size and blocksize. So instead of using
single_depth I guess we should use the relative group number ?.

diff --git a/fs/ext4/mballoc.c b/fs/ext4/mballoc.c
index 1fa311c..891ce41 100644
--- a/fs/ext4/mballoc.c
+++ b/fs/ext4/mballoc.c
@@ -1783,7 +1783,7 @@ static int ext4_mb_init_group(struct super_block *sb, ext4_group_t group)
 		 * no block allocation going on in any
 		 * of that groups
 		 */
-		down_write(&grp->alloc_sem);
+		down_write_nested(&grp->alloc_sem, i);
 	}
 	/*
 	 * make sure we look at only those groups
--
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