Re: [PATCH] mm/shrinker: do not hold RCU lock in shrinker_debugfs_count_show()

[SeongJae Park <sj@kernel.org>]

On Wed, 10 Jun 2026 17:22:51 -0700 SeongJae Park <sj@kernel.org> wrote:

> On Wed, 10 Jun 2026 16:20:48 -0700 Shakeel Butt <shakeel.butt@linux.dev> wrote:
> 
> > Reading the debugfs "count" file of a memcg-aware shrinker can sleep
> > inside an RCU read-side critical section:
> > 
> >   BUG: sleeping function called from invalid context at kernel/cgroup/rstat.c:421
> >   RCU nest depth: 1, expected: 0
> >    css_rstat_flush
> >    mem_cgroup_flush_stats
> >    zswap_shrinker_count
> >    shrinker_debugfs_count_show
> > 
> > shrinker_debugfs_count_show() invokes the ->count_objects() callback
> > under rcu_read_lock(). The zswap callback flushes memcg stats via
> > css_rstat_flush(), which may sleep, so it must not run under RCU.
> > 
> > The RCU lock is not needed here. mem_cgroup_iter() takes RCU internally
> > and returns a memcg holding a css reference (dropped on the next
> > iteration or by mem_cgroup_iter_break()), so the memcg stays alive
> > without it. The shrinker is kept alive by the open debugfs file:
> > shrinker_free() removes the debugfs entries via
> > debugfs_remove_recursive(), which waits for in-flight readers to drain,
> > before call_rcu(..., shrinker_free_rcu_cb). The sibling "scan" handler
> > already invokes the sleeping ->scan_objects() callback with no RCU
> > section.
> > 
> > Drop the rcu_read_lock()/rcu_read_unlock().
> 
> All make sense to me, thank you for the nice description and the fix!
> 
> > 
> > Fixes: 5035ebc644ae ("mm: shrinkers: introduce debugfs interface for memory shrinkers")

Forgot asking this, sorry.  Are you intentionally not adding Cc: stable@ here?
I think the user impact is arguably minor enough to not Cc-ing stable@, but
just thought it would be good to make the intention clear.

> > Reported-by: Zenghui Yu <zenghui.yu@linux.dev>
> > Closes: https://lore.kernel.org/all/c052a064-cddb-494f-a0d8-f8a10b4b1c4d@linux.dev/
> > Suggested-by: Nhat Pham <nphamcs@gmail.com>
> > Signed-off-by: Shakeel Butt <shakeel.butt@linux.dev>
> 
> Reviewed-by: SeongJae Park <sj@kernel.org>


Thanks,
SJ

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