linux-kernel - Re: Reference counting of MMC host driver modules

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Date:	Mon, 12 Jan 2009 16:41:50 +0100
From:	Enrik Berkhan <Enrik.Berkhan@...com>
To:	Pierre Ossman <drzeus-mmc@...eus.cx>
Cc:	Stefan Richter <stefanr@...6.in-berlin.de>,
	David Vrabel <david.vrabel@....com>,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Reference counting of MMC host driver modules

Hi,

Pierre Ossman wrote:
> Stefan Richter <stefanr@...6.in-berlin.de> wrote:
> > So, if somebody asked me to copy my ieee1394/sbp2 safeguard into
> > firewire/fw-sbp2, I would reject that on the grounds that killing the
> > connection to the FireWire disk is the *expected result* of
> > # modprobe -r firewire-ohci
> I have to agree with Stefan's reasoning here. The reference counting is
> about protecting kernel integrity, not about saving the user's foot.

Yes, meanwhile, I have to admit you all are right and I have been
looking in the wrong direction.

My original problem was the following:

- MD raid0 made of some MMC/SD devices
- raid0 activated
- rmmod mmc_host_driver (user error, not noticing the raid is active)
- insmod mmc_host_driver (user error, still not noticing the raid is active)
- write to raid0 device
- kernel crash

I have debugged this a little and found the following reason for the
crash:

When removing the mmc_host_driver, everything seems to be fine; the
MMC/SD block device has been deactivated by mmc_blk_remove(), that in
turn has stopped the queue via mmc_cleanup_queue(). mmc_cleanup_queue()
calls blk_cleanup_queue() on the underlying struct request_queue. By
this, the reference count of the struct request_queues kboj drops to
zero. The MD driver still has the block device open and, actually,
things work fine unless the memory of the struct request_queue isn't
touched, because it is marked dead. Of course, accessing the MD device
returns EIO, but that's fine.

When the mmc_host_driver is reloaded, new struct request_queues will be
allocated and with some probability, the old memory will be re-used for
them or the old memory locations will be re-used for something else. The
key point is that the queues still in use by the MD layer will
effectively no longer be marked dead or completely corrupted.

I don't know if this is a problem of the MD layer, the MMC/SD block
driver, a more general problem or even no problem at all :)

How can this be fixed?

Enrik
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