Re: Buggy commit tracked to: "Re: [PATCH 2/9] iov_iter: move rw_copy_check_uvector() into lib/iov_iter.c"

David Hildenbrand
2020-10-22T08:49:23Z

On 22.10.20 10:40, David Laight wrote:
> From: David Hildenbrand
>> Sent: 22 October 2020 09:35
>>
>> On 22.10.20 10:26, Greg KH wrote:
>>> On Thu, Oct 22, 2020 at 12:39:14AM +0100, Al Viro wrote:
>>>> On Wed, Oct 21, 2020 at 06:13:01PM +0200, Greg KH wrote:
>>>>> On Fri, Sep 25, 2020 at 06:51:39AM +0200, Christoph Hellwig wrote:
>>>>>> From: David Laight <David.Laight@ACULAB.COM>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> This lets the compiler inline it into import_iovec() generating
>>>>>> much better code.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Signed-off-by: David Laight <david.laight@aculab.com>
>>>>>> Signed-off-by: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>
>>>>>> ---
>>>>>> fs/read_write.c | 179 ------------------------------------------------
>>>>>> lib/iov_iter.c | 176 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>>>>>> 2 files changed, 176 insertions(+), 179 deletions(-)
>>>>>
>>>>> Strangely, this commit causes a regression in Linus's tree right now.
>>>>>
>>>>> I can't really figure out what the regression is, only that this commit
>>>>> triggers a "large Android system binary" from working properly. There's
>>>>> no kernel log messages anywhere, and I don't have any way to strace the
>>>>> thing in the testing framework, so any hints that people can provide
>>>>> would be most appreciated.
>>>>
>>>> It's a pure move - modulo changed line breaks in the argument lists
>>>> the functions involved are identical before and after that (just checked
>>>> that directly, by checking out the trees before and after, extracting two
>>>> functions in question from fs/read_write.c and lib/iov_iter.c (before and
>>>> after, resp.) and checking the diff between those.
>>>>
>>>> How certain is your bisection?
>>>
>>> The bisection is very reproducable.
>>>
>>> But, this looks now to be a compiler bug. I'm using the latest version
>>> of clang and if I put "noinline" at the front of the function,
>>> everything works.
>>
>> Well, the compiler can do more invasive optimizations when inlining. If
>> you have buggy code that relies on some unspecified behavior, inlining
>> can change the behavior ... but going over that code, there isn't too
>> much action going on. At least nothing screamed at me.
>
> Apart from all the optimisations that get rid off the 'pass be reference'
> parameters and strange conditional tests.
> Plenty of scope for the compiler getting it wrong.
> But nothing even vaguely illegal.

Not the first time that people blame the compiler to then figure out
that something else is wrong ... but maybe this time is different :)

--
Thanks,

David / dhildenb