Re: [Intel-xe] [PATCH v2 4/9] drm/sched: Split free_job into own work item

[Boris Brezillon <boris.brezillon@collabora.com>]

On Fri, 25 Aug 2023 15:45:49 +0200
Christian König <christian.koenig@amd.com> wrote:

> >>>> I tried this patch with Nouveau and found a race condition:
> >>>>
> >>>> In drm_sched_run_job_work() the job is added to the pending_list via
> >>>> drm_sched_job_begin(), then the run_job() callback is called and the scheduled
> >>>> fence is signaled.
> >>>>
> >>>> However, in parallel drm_sched_get_cleanup_job() might be called from
> >>>> drm_sched_free_job_work(), which picks the first job from the pending_list and
> >>>> for the next job on the pending_list sets the scheduled fence' timestamp field.  
> >> Well why can this happen in parallel? Either the work items are scheduled to
> >> a single threaded work queue or you have protected the pending list with
> >> some locks.
> >>  
> > Xe uses a single-threaded work queue, Nouveau does not (desired
> > behavior).
> >
> > The list of pending jobs is protected by a lock (safe), the race is:
> >
> > add job to pending list
> > run_job
> > signal scheduled fence
> >
> > dequeue from pending list
> > free_job
> > update timestamp
> >
> > Once a job is on the pending list its timestamp can be accessed which
> > can blow up if scheduled fence isn't signaled or more specifically unless
> > DMA_FENCE_FLAG_TIMESTAMP_BIT is set.  

I'm a bit lost. How can this lead to a NULL deref? Timestamp is a
ktime_t embedded in dma_fence, and finished/scheduled are both
dma_fence objects embedded in drm_sched_fence. So, unless
{job,next_job}->s_fence is NULL, or {job,next_job} itself is NULL, I
don't really see where the NULL deref is. If s_fence is NULL, that means
drm_sched_job_init() wasn't called (unlikely to be detected that late),
or ->free_job()/drm_sched_job_cleanup() was called while the job was
still in the pending list. I don't really see a situation where job
could NULL to be honest.

While I agree that updating the timestamp before the fence has been
flagged as signaled/timestamped is broken (timestamp will be
overwritten when dma_fence_signal(scheduled) is called) I don't see a
situation where it would cause a NULL/invalid pointer deref. So I
suspect there's another race causing jobs to be cleaned up while
they're still in the pending_list.

> 
> Ah, that problem again. No that is actually quite harmless.
> 
> You just need to double check if the DMA_FENCE_FLAG_TIMESTAMP_BIT is 
> already set and if it's not set don't do anything.