Re: [RFC PATCH] usb: host: xhci: allow __GFP_FS in dma allocation

Oliver Neukum
2019-05-21T13:24:32Z

On Mo, 2019-05-20 at 10:16 -0400, Alan Stern wrote:
> On Mon, 20 May 2019, Christoph Hellwig wrote:
>
> > GFP_KERNEL if you can block, GFP_ATOMIC if you can't for a good reason,
> > that is the allocation is from irq context or under a spinlock. If you
> > think you have a case where you think you don't want to block, but it
> > is not because of the above reasons we need to have a chat about the
> > details.
>
> What if the allocation requires the kernel to swap some old pages out
> to the backing store, but the backing store is on the device that the
> driver is managing? The swap can't take place until the current I/O
> operation is complete (assuming the driver can handle only one I/O
> operation at a time), and the current operation can't complete until
> the old pages are swapped out. Result: deadlock.
>
> Isn't that the whole reason for using GFP_NOIO in the first place?

Hi,

lookig at this it seems to me that we are in danger of a deadlock

- during reset - devices cannot do IO while being reset
covered by the USB layer in usb_reset_device
- resume & restore - devices cannot do IO while suspended
covered by driver core in rpm_callback
- disconnect - a disconnected device cannot do IO
is this a theoretical case or should I do something to
the driver core?

How about changing configurations on USB?

Regards
Oliver