Re: Userfaultfd doesn't seem to break out of poll on fd close

[Jason Gunthorpe <jgg@ziepe.ca>]

On Tue, Apr 14, 2020 at 05:45:16PM -0400, Peter Xu wrote:
> On Sun, Apr 12, 2020 at 01:10:40PM -0700, Brian Geffon wrote:
> > Hi,
> > It seems that userfaultfd isn't woken from a poll when the file
> > descriptor is closed. It seems that it should be from the code in
> > userfault_ctx_release, but it appears that's not actually called
> > immediately. I have a simple standalone example that shows this
> > behavior. It's straight forward: one thread creates a userfaultfd and
> > then closes it after a second thread has entered a poll syscall, some
> > abbreviated strace output is below showing this and the code can be
> > seen here: https://gist.github.com/bgaff/9a8fbbe8af79c0e18502430d416df77e
> > 
> > Given that it's probably very common to have a dedicated thread remain
> > blocked indefinitely in a poll(2) waiting for faults there must be a
> > way to break it out early when it's closed. Am I missing something?
> 
> Hi, Brian,
> 
> I might be wrong below, just to share my understanding...
> 
> IMHO a well-behaved userspace should not close() on a file descriptor
> if it's still in use within another thread.  In this case, the poll()
> thread is still using the userfaultfd handle

I also don't think concurrant close() on a file descriptor that is
under poll() is well defined, or should be relied upon.

> IIUC userfaultfd_release() is only called when the file descriptor
> destructs itself.  But shouldn't the poll() take a refcount of that
> file descriptor too before waiting?  Not sure userfaultfd_release() is
> the place to kick then, because if so, close() will only decrease the
> fd refcount from 2->1, and I'm not sure userfaultfd_release() will be
> triggered.

This is most probably true.

eventfd, epoll and pthread_join is the robust answer to these
problems.

Jason