Re: [BUG] sg.c: sleeping function called from invalid context

[James Bottomley <James.Bottomley@suse.de>]

On Thu, 2009-10-01 at 15:59 -0400, Douglas Gilbert wrote:
> iceberg wrote:
> > 	KERNEL_VERSION: 2.6.31
> > 	DESCRIBE:
> > Driver sg.c might sleep in atomic context, because it calls 
> > scsi_device_put under lock_kernel.
> > 
> > /drivers/scsi/sg.c:306:
> > 	static int
> > 	sg_open(struct inode *inode, struct file *filp)
> > 	{
> > 	...
> > 	lock_kernel();
> > 	...
> > 	error_out:
> > 	        if (retval)
> > 	                scsi_device_put(sdp->device);
> > 	...
> > 
> > Path to might_sleep macro from scsi_device_put:
> > 1. scsi_device_put calls put_device at ./drivers/scsi/scsi.c:1111 
> > 2. put_device calls kobject_put at ./drivers/base/core.c:1038 
> > 3. kobject_put calls kref_put at ./lib/kobject.c
> > 4. kref_put may call callback function kobject_release at ./lib/kref.c if 
> > refcount becomes zero, which might_sleep because it calls user event. Details:
> > 	5.1 kobject_cleanup calls kobject_uevent at ./lib/kobject.c:555
> > 	5.2 kobject_uevent calls kobject_uevent_env at ./lib/kobject_uevent.c:282
> > 	5.3 kobject_uevent_env calls call_usermodehelper_exec at 
> > include/linux/kmod.h:83
> > 	5.4 call_usermodehelper_exec calls wait_for_completion at ./kernel/kmod.c:481
> > 	5.5 wait_for_completion calls wait_for_common at ./kernel/sched.c:5710
> > 	5.6 wait_for_common calls might_sleep at ./kernels/sched.c:5692
> > 
> > Found by: Linux Driver Verification
> 
> This patch to sg_open() does one (and only one) unlock_kernel()
> prior to scsi_device_put(). I presume sg_put_dev() may also
> sleep so the unlock_kernel() is moved before it as well.
> 
> Hopefully Tomo will comment.

Really, this isn't a bug, so no fix is required.

The analysis is wrong on two levels.  Firstly scsi_device_put() is
designed to be called from interrupt/locked context and secondly
lock_kernel isn't actually a lock taking interrupt context anyway.  The
BLK is a strange beast; it's recursive and it's actually transparently
dropped and reacquired over schedule, so you can sleep by design with
the BKL held.

James