Re: [PATCH for v3.19, v2] Avoid that sd_shutdown() triggers a kernel warning

[Christoph Hellwig <hch@infradead.org>]

On Mon, Jan 12, 2015 at 11:29:15AM -0500, Alan Stern wrote:
> This seems like a good idea and the obvious (once it has been pointed 
> out!) approach.
> 
> Perhaps not directly related to the issue at hand is this question: In
> scsi_rescan_device() we will now have:
> 
> 	mutex_lock(&shost->scan_mutex);
> 	if (dev->driver && try_module_get(dev->driver->owner)) {
> 		struct scsi_driver *drv = to_scsi_driver(dev->driver);
> 
> 		if (drv->rescan)
> 			drv->rescan(dev);
> 		module_put(dev->driver->owner);
> 	}
> 	mutex_unlock(&shost->scan_mutex);
> 
> What prevents the device from being unbound from its driver while the
> rescan runs?  Evaluating the argument to the module_put() would then
> dereference a NULL pointer.
> 
> Unbind events that happen through the normal scsi_remove_host() 
> mechanism are fine, because scsi_remove_host() locks the scan_mutex.  
> But what about writes to the driver's sysfs "unbind" attribute?

Looks like we should still get an unconditional reference to
the device using get_device in scsi_rescan_device at least.

But this seems like a more generic problem, and at least a quick glance at
the pci_driver methods seems like others don't have a good
synchroniation of ->remove against random driver methods.