linux-kernel - Re: [RFC][PATCH] Fix a race between rwsem and the scheduler

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Date:   Wed, 31 Aug 2016 20:55:44 +1000
From:   Benjamin Herrenschmidt <benh@...nel.crashing.org>
To:     Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org>
Cc:     Oleg Nesterov <oleg@...hat.com>,
        Balbir Singh <bsingharora@...il.com>,
        LKML <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
        Nicholas Piggin <nicholas.piggin@...il.com>
Subject: Re: [RFC][PATCH] Fix a race between rwsem and the scheduler

On Wed, 2016-08-31 at 09:20 +0200, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 31, 2016 at 07:25:01AM +1000, Benjamin Herrenschmidt wrote:
> > 
> > On Tue, 2016-08-30 at 15:04 +0200, Oleg Nesterov wrote:
> > > 
> > > 
> > > Confused... how this connects to UNLOCK+LOCK on rq->lock? A LOAD can
> > > leak into the critical section.
> > > 
> > > But context switch should imply mb() we can rely on?
> > 
> > Between setting of ->on_rq and returning to the task so it can
> > change its state back to [UN]INTERRUPTIBLE, there will be at least one
> > write barrier (spin unlock of the rq),
> 
> spin-unlock is _not_ a write barrier, its a RELEASE barrier, and is not
> sufficient for this.

Ah yes well it's an lwsync so it's a wmb for us :-) .

> > possibly even a full barrier
> > (context switch). The write barrier is enough so I didn't dig to make
> > sure we always context switch in the scenario we're looking at but I
> > think we do.
> 
> There is enough, you just need to pair the RELEASE with an ACQUIRE to
> get a full load-store barrier.

Right so I *think* there will be at least the release of the rq_lock by
the IPI followed by schedule itself taking and releasing it again, but
I can't vouch for it. As I said, I didn't dig deeper on that side of
things as for us a spin_unlock is a write barrier and for the write
side that concerns me here it's sufficient ;-) It's the read side that
has a problem.

That said you may want to investigate more to make sure there is no way
out of schedule where that spin_unlock is the only thing between
setting on_rq and coming out (which leads to setting the task state).

I suspect there will be at least one more re-aquisition & release of
the rq lock but I may be wrong.

Cheers,
Ben.