Re: [RFC v1 1/1] vfio-ccw: Don't call cp_free if we are processing a channel program

Farhan Ali
2019-06-28T13:05:16Z

On 06/27/2019 05:14 AM, Cornelia Huck wrote:
> On Mon, 24 Jun 2019 11:24:16 -0400
> Farhan Ali <alifm@linux.ibm.com> wrote:
>
>> On 06/24/2019 11:09 AM, Cornelia Huck wrote:
>>> On Mon, 24 Jun 2019 10:44:17 -0400
>>> Farhan Ali <alifm@linux.ibm.com> wrote:
>
>>>> But even if we don't remove the cp_free from vfio_ccw_sch_io_todo, I am
>>>> not sure if your suggestion will fix the problem. The problem here is
>>>> that we can call vfio_ccw_sch_io_todo (for a clear or halt interrupt) at
>>>> the same time we are handling an ssch request. So depending on the order
>>>> of the operations we could still end up calling cp_free from both from
>>>> threads (i refer to the threads I mentioned in response to Eric's
>>>> earlier email).
>>>
>>> What I don't see is why this is a problem with ->initialized; wasn't
>>> the problem that we misinterpreted an interrupt for csch as one for a
>>> not-yet-issued ssch?
>>>
>>
>> It's the order in which we do things, which could cause the problem.
>> Since we queue interrupt handling in the workqueue, we could delay
>> processing the csch interrupt. During this delay if ssch comes through,
>> we might have already set ->initialized to true.
>>
>> So when we get around to handling the interrupt in io_todo, we would go
>> ahead and call cp_free. This would cause the problem of freeing the
>> ccwchain list while we might be adding to it.
>>
>>>>
>>>> Another thing that concerns me is that vfio-ccw can also issue csch/hsch
>>>> in the quiesce path, independently of what the guest issues. So in that
>>>> case we could have a similar scenario to processing an ssch request and
>>>> issuing halt/clear in parallel. But maybe I am being paranoid :)
>>>
>>> I think the root problem is really trying to clear a cp while another
>>> thread is trying to set it up. Should we maybe use something like rcu?
>>>
>>>
>>
>> Yes, this is the root problem. I am not too familiar with rcu locking,
>> but what would be the benefit over a traditional mutex?
>
> I don't quite remember what I had been envisioning at the time (sorry,
> the heat seems to make my brain a bit slushy :/), but I think we might
> have two copies of the cp and use an rcu-ed pointer in the private
> structure to point to one of the copies. If we make sure we've
> synchronized on the pointer at interrupt time, we should be able to
> free the old one in _todo and act on the new on when doing ssch. And
> yes, I realize that this is awfully vague :)
>
>

Sorry for the delayed response. I was trying out few ideas, and I think
the simplest one for me that worked and that makes sense is to
explicitly add the check to see if the state == CP_PENDING when trying
to free the cp (as mentioned by Halil in a separate thread).

When we are in the CP_PENDING state then we know for sure that we have a
currently allocated cp and no other thread is working on it. So in the
interrupt context, it should be okay to free cp.

I have prototyped with the mutex, but the code becomes too hairy. I
looked into the rcu api and from what I understand about rcu it would
provide advantage if we more readers than updaters. But in our case we
really have 2 updaters, updating the cp at the same time.

In the meantime I also have some minor fixes while going over the code
again :). I will post a v2 soon for review.

Thanks
Farhan