Re: [-mm] BUG: sleeping function called from invalid context at include/linux/pagemap.h:290

Hugh Dickins
2008-07-03T17:25:25Z

On Thu, 3 Jul 2008, Li Zefan wrote:
> KOSAKI Motohiro wrote:
> >> Seems the problematic patch is :
> >> mmap-handle-mlocked-pages-during-map-remap-unmap.patch
> >>
> >> I'm using mmotm uploaded yesterday by Andrew, so I guess this bug
> >> has not been fixed ?
> >>
> >> BUG: sleeping function called from invalid context at include/linux/pagemap.h:290
> >> in_atomic():1, irqs_disabled():0
> >> no locks held by gpg-agent/2134.
> >
> > Li-san, I tested 2.6.26-rc8-mm1 on x86_64.
> > but I can't reproduce it.
> >
> > Could you explain detail of reproduce way?
> >
>
> Nothing special. I booted the system up, and entered KDE, and opened xterm,
> and typed "dmesg".
>
> .config attached.

The reason you're seeing it and others not is because your
CONFIG_HIGHPTE=y
is making the issue visible.

__munlock_pte_handler is trying to lock_page (or migration_entry_wait)
while using the per-cpu kmap_atomic from walk_pte_range's pte_offset_map.
Sleeping functions called from atomic context.

There's quite a lot to worry about there.

That page table walker was originally written to gather some info
for /proc display, not to act upon the page table contents in any
serious way. So it's just doing pte_offset_map when every(?) other
page table walk would be required to pte_offset_map_lock. If it
were doing pte_offset_map_lock, then lots more people would have
seen the problem sooner.

Does this usage need to pte_offset_map_lock? I think to the extent
that it needs to lock_page, it needs to pte_offset_map_lock: both
are because file truncation (or more commonly reclaim, but without
looking into it too carefully, I dare say reclaim isn't a problem
in this context) could interfere with page->mapping and pte at any
instant.

Conveniently, we have not one but two attempts at a generic page
walker (sigh!): the other one, apply_to_page_range in mm/memory.c,
does do the lock; it also allocates a page table if it's not there,
I guess that aspect wouldn't be a problem on an mlocked area. Maybe
using apply_to_page_range would be better here, and sidestep the
issue of not having CONFIG_PAGE_WALKER.

But if it does pte_offset_map_lock, look, migration_entry_wait does
so too; well, never mind the lock, it'll kunmap_atomic
Obviously that part cries out for refactoring.

And how do you manage the lock_page? Offhand, I don't know, I'm
just reporting on the obvious. Would trylocking be good enough?

(I do dislike "generic page walkers" because they encourage this
kind of oversight; and I hate to think of the latency problems
they might be introducing - no sign of a cond_resched in either.)

Hugh