linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH][BUGFIX] cgroups: more safe tasklist locking in cgroup_attach

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Date:	Mon, 15 Aug 2011 19:04:15 -0400
From:	Ben Blum <bblum@...rew.cmu.edu>
To:	Frederic Weisbecker <fweisbec@...il.com>
Cc:	Oleg Nesterov <oleg@...hat.com>, Ben Blum <bblum@...rew.cmu.edu>,
	NeilBrown <neilb@...e.de>, paulmck@...ux.vnet.ibm.com,
	Paul Menage <menage@...gle.com>,
	Li Zefan <lizf@...fujitsu.com>,
	containers@...ts.linux-foundation.org,
	"linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org" <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH][BUGFIX] cgroups: more safe tasklist locking in
 cgroup_attach_proc

On Tue, Aug 16, 2011 at 12:50:06AM +0200, Frederic Weisbecker wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 15, 2011 at 08:49:57PM +0200, Oleg Nesterov wrote:
> > On 07/29, Ben Blum wrote:
> > >
> > > According to this thread - https://lkml.org/lkml/2011/7/27/243 - RCU is
> > > not sufficient to guarantee the tasklist is stable w.r.t. de_thread and
> > > exit. Taking tasklist_lock for reading, instead of rcu_read_lock,
> > > ensures proper exclusion.
> > 
> > Yes.
> > 
> > So far I still think we should fix while_each_thread() so that it works
> > under rcu_read_lock() "as exepected", I'll try to think more.
> > 
> > But whatever we do with while_each_thread(), this can't help
> > cgroup_attach_proc(), it needs the locking.
> > 
> > > -	rcu_read_lock();
> > > +	read_lock(&tasklist_lock);
> > >  	if (!thread_group_leader(leader)) {
> > 
> > Agreed, this should work.
> > 
> > But can't we avoid the global list? thread_group_leader() or not, we do
> > not really care. We only need to ensure we can safely find all threads.
> > 
> > How about the patch below?
> > 
> > 
> > With or without this/your patch this leader can die right after we
> > drop the lock. ss->can_attach(leader) and ss->attach(leader) look
> > suspicious. If a sub-thread execs, this task_struct has nothing to
> > do with the threadgroup.
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > Also. This is off-topic, but... Why cgroup_attach_proc() and
> > cgroup_attach_task() do ->attach_task() + cgroup_task_migrate()
> > in the different order? cgroup_attach_proc() looks wrong even
> > if currently doesn't matter.
> 
> Right. As we concluded in our off-list discussion, if there
> is no strong reason for that, I'm going to fix that in my task
> counter patchset because there it really matters. If we can't
> migrate the thread because it has already exited, we really
> don't want to call ->attach_task() but rather cancel_attach_task().
> 
> Thanks.
> 

Yes. Um, this must have been a mistake on my part. The lines of code
should be the other way around. It should be done in a separate bugfix
patch, though, so it goes through faster...

-- Ben
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