Re: [RFC] scsi: reduce protection of scan_mutex in scsi_remove_device

Song Liu
2017-04-25T17:43:19Z

> On Apr 25, 2017, at 10:23 AM, Bart Van Assche <Bart.VanAssche@sandisk.com> wrote:
>
> On Fri, 2017-04-21 at 14:13 -0700, Song Liu wrote:
>> When a device is deleted through sysfs handle "delete", the code
>> locks shost->scan_mutex. If multiple devices are deleted at the
>> same time, these deletes will be handled in series.
>>
>> On the other hand, some devices do long latency IO during deletion,
>> for example, sd_shutdown() may do sync cache and/or start_stop.
>> It is not necessary for these commands to run in series.
>>
>> To reduce latency of parallel "delete" requests, this patch reduces
>> the protection of scan_mutex. The only function with Scsi_Host
>> called in __scsi_remove_device() is the optional slave_destroy().
>> Therefore, the protection of scan_mutex is only necessary for this
>> function.
>
> Hello Song,
>
> What you wrote above is wrong. It is necessary to serialize SCSI
> scanning against SCSI device removal. That is why scan_mutex is held
> around the __scsi_remove_device() call. When adding a LUN the following
> (and several other) actions are performed:
> * Allocation of memory for struct scsi_device.
> * Allocation of a block layer request queue.
> * Initialization of the .sdev_gendev and .sdev_dev device structures.
> * Association of the transport layer driver with the SCSI device.
> * Association of a device handler with the SCSI device (e.g. ALUA).
> * Making the .sdev_gendev and .sdev_dev devices visible in sysfs.
> * Making the transport layer attributes visible in sysfs.
> * Creating a bsg device node in sysfs.
> * Association of an upper layer driver
> (e.g. sd or sr) with the SCSI LUN.
>
> Removal of a LUN means undoing all of the above. If adding and removing
> a LUN would not be not serialized then there would be a risk that removal
> and immediate reregistration of a LUN will fail due to the reregistration
> process trying to add sysfs attributes that were not yet removed by the
> removal step.
>
> Bart.

Hello Bart,

Thanks a lot for looking into this.

I have been studying the code recently. I am wondering whether the following
would work:

1. Introduce a new mutex for scsi_device to protect most operations in the
list you gathered above;

2. For operations like host->slave_destroy(), ensure they access scsi_host
data with host_lock (or another spin lock).

I looked into all instances of slave_destroy, only 2 of them:
dc395x_slave_destroy() and visorhba_slave_destroy() access scsi_host data
without protection of spin lock.

3. Once 1 and 2 is ready, __scsi_remove_device() only need to hold the mutex
for the scsi_device. scan_mutex is no longer required.

Is this a valid path?

Thanks again,
Song