linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH -mm -V7] mm, swap: fix race between swapoff and some swap operations

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Date:   Thu, 14 Feb 2019 12:30:02 -0800
From:   Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>
To:     Michal Hocko <mhocko@...nel.org>
Cc:     "Huang, Ying" <ying.huang@...el.com>, linux-mm@...ck.org,
        linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, Hugh Dickins <hughd@...gle.com>,
        "Paul E . McKenney" <paulmck@...ux.vnet.ibm.com>,
        Minchan Kim <minchan@...nel.org>,
        Johannes Weiner <hannes@...xchg.org>,
        Tim Chen <tim.c.chen@...ux.intel.com>,
        Mel Gorman <mgorman@...hsingularity.net>,
        Jérôme Glisse <jglisse@...hat.com>,
        Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@...hat.com>,
        David Rientjes <rientjes@...gle.com>,
        Rik van Riel <riel@...hat.com>, Jan Kara <jack@...e.cz>,
        Dave Jiang <dave.jiang@...el.com>,
        Daniel Jordan <daniel.m.jordan@...cle.com>,
        Andrea Parri <andrea.parri@...rulasolutions.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH -mm -V7] mm, swap: fix race between swapoff and some
 swap operations

On Thu, 14 Feb 2019 15:33:18 +0100 Michal Hocko <mhocko@...nel.org> wrote:

> > Because swapoff() is very rare code path, to make the normal path runs as
> > fast as possible, disabling preemption + stop_machine() instead of
> > reference count is used to implement get/put_swap_device().  From
> > get_swap_device() to put_swap_device(), the preemption is disabled, so
> > stop_machine() in swapoff() will wait until put_swap_device() is called.
> > 
> > In addition to swap_map, cluster_info, etc.  data structure in the struct
> > swap_info_struct, the swap cache radix tree will be freed after swapoff,
> > so this patch fixes the race between swap cache looking up and swapoff
> > too.
> > 
> > Races between some other swap cache usages protected via disabling
> > preemption and swapoff are fixed too via calling stop_machine() between
> > clearing PageSwapCache() and freeing swap cache data structure.
> > 
> > Alternative implementation could be replacing disable preemption with
> > rcu_read_lock_sched and stop_machine() with synchronize_sched().
> 
> using stop_machine is generally discouraged. It is a gross
> synchronization.

This was discussed to death and I think the changelog explains the
conclusions adequately.  swapoff is super-rare so a stop_machine() in
that path is appropriate if its use permits more efficiency in the
regular swap code paths.  

> Besides that, since when do we have this problem?

What problem??