Re: [PATCH 1/5] locking: Add rwsem_is_write_locked()

Peter Zijlstra
2023-09-07T19:38:51Z

On Thu, Sep 07, 2023 at 08:20:30PM +0100, Matthew Wilcox wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 07, 2023 at 09:08:10PM +0200, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> > On Thu, Sep 07, 2023 at 06:47:01PM +0100, Matthew Wilcox (Oracle) wrote:
> > > Several places want to know whether the lock is held by a writer, instead
> > > of just whether it's held. We can implement this for both normal and
> > > rt rwsems. RWSEM_WRITER_LOCKED is declared in rwsem.c and exposing
> > > it outside that file might tempt other people to use it, so just use
> > > a comment to note that's what the 1 means, and help anybody find it if
> > > they're looking to change the implementation.
> >
> > I'm presuming this is deep in a callchain where they know they hold the
> > lock, but they lost in what capacity?
>
> No, it's just assertions. You can see that in patch 3 where it's
> used in functions called things like "xfs_islocked".

Right, but if you're not the lock owner, your answer to the question is
a dice-roll, it might be locked, it might not be.

> > In general I strongly dislike the whole _is_locked family, because it
> > gives very poorly defined semantics if used by anybody but the owner.
> >
> > If these new functions are indeed to be used only by lock holders to
> > determine what kind of lock they hold, could we please put:
> >
> > lockdep_assert_held()
> >
> > in them?
>
> Patch 2 shows it in use in the MM code. We already have a
> lockdep_assert_held_write(), but most people don't enable lockdep, so

Most devs should run with lockdep on when writing new code, and I know
the sanitizer robots run with lockdep on.

In general there seems to be a ton of lockdep on coverage.

> we also have VM_BUG_ON_MM(!rwsem_is_write_locked(&mm->mmap_lock), mm)
> to give us a good assertion when lockdep is disabled.

Is that really worth it still? I mean, much of these assertions pre-date
lockdep.

> XFS has a problem with using lockdep in general, which is that a worker
> thread can be spawned and use the fact that the spawner is holding the
> lock. There's no mechanism for the worker thread to ask "Does struct
> task_struct *p hold the lock?".

Will be somewhat tricky to make happen -- but might be doable. It is
however an interface that is *very* hard to use correctly. Basically I
think you want to also assert that your target task 'p' is blocked,
right?

That is: assert @p is blocked and holds @lock.