Re: [PATCH] PCI: Fix racing for pci device removing via sysfs

[Yinghai Lu <yinghai@kernel.org>]

On Mon, Apr 29, 2013 at 11:15 AM, Bjorn Helgaas <bhelgaas@google.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 29, 2013 at 08:19:10AM -0700, Yinghai Lu wrote:
>> ok, i missed that. if we can use LIST_POISON, then could be more simple.
>> like -v4.
>
> I inlined your v4 patch below for convenience.
>
> Maybe my allergic reaction to your use of LIST_POISON1 is unjustified,
> but I am dubious about the idea that xhci was the only place that needed
> it before now, and we just happened to find one more place in PCI that
> needs it.  That doesn't make sense because good design patterns are used
> many times, not just once or twice.
>
> I thought the whole point of the get/put scheme was that if we had a
> pointer to a correctly reference-counted object, we didn't need to check
> whether the object was still valid because the object remains valid until
> all the references are released.
>
> Gu's "[v2 2/2] PCI: Convert alloc_pci_dev(void) to pci_alloc_dev(bus)"
> patch essentially did this:
>
>     pci_destroy_dev(struct pci_dev *dev) {
>       ...
> +     pci_bus_put(dev->bus)
>       pci_free_resources(dev)
>       put_device(&dev->dev)
>     }
>
> I think this is the wrong place to do the pci_bus_put() because the
> pci_dev is reference-counted, and there may be other users that still
> have valid references to it.
>
> In this case, 10:00.0 is a bridge leading to [bus 11-1e], and 1a:01.0 is
> part of that subtree.  The user removed both 10:00.0 and 1a:01.0 almost
> simultaneously via sysfs and we scheduled a callback for each.
>
> Each callback acquires a pci_dev reference, and removal of 10:00.0 and the
> subtree below it, including pci_destroy_dev(1a:01.0), is done first.  The
> callback to remove 1a:01.0 is still pending and has a valid reference to
> the 1a:01.0 pci_dev.
>
> Since the 1a:01.0 callback is still pending, the put_device in that first
> pci_destroy_dev(1a:01.0) call decrements the ref count but doesn't release
> the pci_dev.
>
> I think the 1a:01.0 pci_dev should retain its reference to the pci_bus
> for as long as the pci_dev exists, so the pci_bus_put() should go in
> pci_release_dev() instead.

Good point.

will rework pci remove sequence.

Thanks

Yinghai