-stable review patch. If anyone has any objections, please let us know. --------------------- From: Quentin Barnes My group ran into a AIO process hang on a 2.6.24 kernel with the process sleeping indefinitely in io_getevents(2) waiting for the last wakeup to come and it never would. We ran the tests on x86_64 SMP. The hang only occurred on a Xeon box ("Clovertown") but not a Core2Duo ("Conroe"). On the Xeon, the L2 cache isn't shared between all eight processors, but is L2 is shared between between all two processors on the Core2Duo we use. My analysis of the hang is if you go down to the second while-loop in read_events(), what happens on processor #1: 1) add_wait_queue_exclusive() adds thread to ctx->wait 2) aio_read_evt() to check tail 3) if aio_read_evt() returned 0, call [io_]schedule() and sleep In aio_complete() with processor #2: A) info->tail = tail; B) waitqueue_active(&ctx->wait) C) if waitqueue_active() returned non-0, call wake_up() The way the code is written, step 1 must be seen by all other processors before processor 1 checks for pending events in step 2 (that were recorded by step A) and step A by processor 2 must be seen by all other processors (checked in step 2) before step B is done. The race I believed I was seeing is that steps 1 and 2 were effectively swapped due to the __list_add() being delayed by the L2 cache not shared by some of the other processors. Imagine: proc 2: just before step A proc 1, step 1: adds to ctx->wait, but is not visible by other processors yet proc 1, step 2: checks tail and sees no pending events proc 2, step A: updates tail proc 1, step 3: calls [io_]schedule() and sleeps proc 2, step B: checks ctx->wait, but sees no one waiting, skips wakeup so proc 1 sleeps indefinitely My patch adds a memory barrier between steps A and B. It ensures that the update in step 1 gets seen on processor 2 before continuing. If processor 1 was just before step 1, the memory barrier makes sure that step A (update tail) gets seen by the time processor 1 makes it to step 2 (check tail). Before the patch our AIO process would hang virtually 100% of the time. After the patch, we have yet to see the process ever hang. Signed-off-by: Quentin Barnes Reviewed-by: Zach Brown Cc: Benjamin LaHaise Cc: Cc: Nick Piggin Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton [ We should probably disallow that "if (waitqueue_active()) wake_up()" coding pattern, because it's so often buggy wrt memory ordering ] Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds Signed-off-by: Chris Wright Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman --- fs/aio.c | 8 ++++++++ 1 file changed, 8 insertions(+) --- a/fs/aio.c +++ b/fs/aio.c @@ -997,6 +997,14 @@ put_rq: /* everything turned out well, dispose of the aiocb. */ ret = __aio_put_req(ctx, iocb); + /* + * We have to order our ring_info tail store above and test + * of the wait list below outside the wait lock. This is + * like in wake_up_bit() where clearing a bit has to be + * ordered with the unlocked test. + */ + smp_mb(); + if (waitqueue_active(&ctx->wait)) wake_up(&ctx->wait); -- -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/