linux-kernel - [PATCH v3] lock/semaphore: Avoid an unnecessary deadlock within up()

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Date:	Wed, 17 Feb 2016 18:11:51 +0900
From:	Byungchul Park <byungchul.park@....com>
To:	willy@...ux.intel.com, akpm@...ux-foundation.org, mingo@...nel.org
Cc:	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, akinobu.mita@...il.com, jack@...e.cz,
	sergey.senozhatsky.work@...il.com, peter@...leysoftware.com
Subject: [PATCH v3] lock/semaphore: Avoid an unnecessary deadlock within up()

change from v2 to v3
- the way to solve it in v2 is racy, so I changed the approach entirely.
- just make semaphore's trylock use spinlock's trylock.

change from v1 to v2
- remove unnecessary overhead by the redundant spin(un)lock.

Since I faced a infinite recursive printk() bug, I've tried to propose
patches the title of which is "lib/spinlock_debug.c: prevent a recursive
cycle in the debug code". But I noticed the root problem cannot be fixed
by that, through some discussion thanks to Sergey and Peter. So I focused
on preventing the deadlock.

-----8<-----
>From 43e029ca920890ac644e30d873be69cf5d01efdb Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Byungchul Park <byungchul.park@....com>
Date: Wed, 17 Feb 2016 17:22:18 +0900
Subject: [PATCH v3] lock/semaphore: Avoid an unnecessary deadlock within up()

One of semaphore acquisition functions, down_trylock() is implemented
using raw_spin_lock_irqsave(&sem->lock) even though it's enough to use
raw_spin_trylock_irqsave(). Furthermore, using raw_spin_lock_irqsave()
can cause a unnecessary deadlock as described below. Just make it use
the spinlock trylock to implement the semaphore trylock so that we can
avoid the unnecessary deadlock happened.

The scenario the bad thing can happen is,

printk
  console_trylock
  console_unlock
    up_console_sem
      up
        raw_spin_lock_irqsave(&sem->lock, flags)
        __up
          wake_up_process
            try_to_wake_up
              raw_spin_lock_irqsave(&p->pi_lock)
                __spin_lock_debug
                  spin_dump
                    printk
                      console_trylock
                        raw_spin_lock_irqsave(&sem->lock, flags)
                        >>> DEADLOCK <<<

Signed-off-by: Byungchul Park <byungchul.park@....com>
---
 kernel/locking/semaphore.c | 13 +++++++------
 1 file changed, 7 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-)

diff --git a/kernel/locking/semaphore.c b/kernel/locking/semaphore.c
index b8120ab..6634b68 100644
--- a/kernel/locking/semaphore.c
+++ b/kernel/locking/semaphore.c
@@ -130,13 +130,14 @@ EXPORT_SYMBOL(down_killable);
 int down_trylock(struct semaphore *sem)
 {
 	unsigned long flags;
-	int count;
+	int count = -1;
 
-	raw_spin_lock_irqsave(&sem->lock, flags);
-	count = sem->count - 1;
-	if (likely(count >= 0))
-		sem->count = count;
-	raw_spin_unlock_irqrestore(&sem->lock, flags);
+	if (raw_spin_trylock_irqsave(&sem->lock, flags)) {
+		count = sem->count - 1;
+		if (likely(count >= 0))
+			sem->count = count;
+		raw_spin_unlock_irqrestore(&sem->lock, flags);
+	}
 
 	return (count < 0);
 }
-- 
1.9.1