linux-ext4 - Re: kernel BUG at fs/ext4/inode.c:LINE!

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Date:   Mon, 23 Nov 2020 20:53:20 -0800
From:   Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>
To:     Hugh Dickins <hughd@...gle.com>
Cc:     Jan Kara <jack@...e.cz>,
        syzbot <syzbot+3622cea378100f45d59f@...kaller.appspotmail.com>,
        Andreas Dilger <adilger.kernel@...ger.ca>,
        Ext4 Developers List <linux-ext4@...r.kernel.org>,
        Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
        syzkaller-bugs <syzkaller-bugs@...glegroups.com>,
        "Theodore Ts'o" <tytso@....edu>, Linux-MM <linux-mm@...ck.org>,
        Oleg Nesterov <oleg@...hat.com>,
        Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
        "Kirill A. Shutemov" <kirill@...temov.name>,
        Nicholas Piggin <npiggin@...il.com>,
        Alex Shi <alex.shi@...ux.alibaba.com>, Qian Cai <cai@....pw>,
        Christoph Hellwig <hch@...radead.org>,
        "Darrick J. Wong" <darrick.wong@...cle.com>,
        Matthew Wilcox <willy@...radead.org>,
        William Kucharski <william.kucharski@...cle.com>,
        Jens Axboe <axboe@...nel.dk>,
        linux-fsdevel <linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org>,
        linux-xfs <linux-xfs@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: kernel BUG at fs/ext4/inode.c:LINE!

On Mon, Nov 23, 2020 at 8:07 PM Hugh Dickins <hughd@...gle.com> wrote:
>
> Then on crashing a second time, realized there's a stronger reason against
> that approach.  If my testing just occasionally crashes on that check,
> when the page is reused for part of a compound page, wouldn't it be much
> more common for the page to get reused as an order-0 page before reaching
> wake_up_page()?  And on rare occasions, might that reused page already be
> marked PageWriteback by its new user, and already be waited upon?  What
> would that look like?
>
> It would look like BUG_ON(PageWriteback) after wait_on_page_writeback()
> in write_cache_pages() (though I have never seen that crash myself).

So looking more at the patch, I started looking at this part:

> +       writeback = TestClearPageWriteback(page);
> +       /* No need for smp_mb__after_atomic() after TestClear */
> +       waiters = PageWaiters(page);
> +       if (waiters) {
> +               /*
> +                * Writeback doesn't hold a page reference on its own, relying
> +                * on truncation to wait for the clearing of PG_writeback.
> +                * We could safely wake_up_page_bit(page, PG_writeback) here,
> +                * while holding i_pages lock: but that would be a poor choice
> +                * if the page is on a long hash chain; so instead choose to
> +                * get_page+put_page - though atomics will add some overhead.
> +                */
> +               get_page(page);
> +       }

and thinking more about this, my first reaction was "but that has the
same race, just a smaller window".

And then reading the comment more, I realize you relied on the i_pages
lock, and that this odd ordering was to avoid the possible latency.

But what about the non-mapping case? I'm not sure how that happens,
but this does seem very fragile.

I'm wondering why you didn't want to just do the get_page()
unconditionally and early. Is avoiding the refcount really such a big
optimization?

            Linus