Re: LOCKDEP: 3.9-rc1: mount.nfs/4272 still has locks held!

[Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>]

On Thu, Mar 7, 2013 at 7:59 AM, Myklebust, Trond
<Trond.Myklebust@netapp.com> wrote:
>
> It _shouldn't_ be an interruption unless the filesystem can't make
> progress.

So how can we tell? Calling "freezable_schedule()" if you're not ready
to be frozen is not good. And nobody but the NFS code can know.

You might want to introduce some counter that counts number of
outstanding non-interruptible events, and only call the "freezable"
version if that counter is zero.

A better alternative might be to *never* call the freezable version.
Because those freezable_*() things are really quite disgusting, and
are wrong - they don't actually freeze the process, they say "I don't
care if you freeze me while I sleep", and you might actually wake up
*while* the system is being frozen. I think the whole concept is
broken. Rafaei - comments? The function really is crap, regardless of
any unrelated NFS problems.

So what NFS could do instead is actually check the "do I need to
freeze" flag, and if you need to freeze you consider it an abort - and
do *not* try to continue. Just freeze, and then act as if the machine
got rebooted as far as NFS was concerned. That should work anyway, no?

That does sound a lot more complex, though.

                 Linus