Re: 2.6.17-rc6-mm1/pktcdvd - BUG: possible circular locking

Arjan van de Ven
2006-06-22T18:21:00Z

On Thu, 2006-06-22 at 16:50 +0200, Peter Osterlund wrote:
> Arjan van de Ven <arjan@linux.intel.com> writes:
>
> > Laurent Riffard wrote:
> > > Hello,
> > > This BUG happened while pktcdvd service was starting. Basically, the
> > > 2 following commands were issued:
> > > - modprobe ptkcdvd
> > > - pktsetup dvd /dev/dvd
> >
> > This appears to be a real bug:
> >
> > A normal pkt dvd block dev open takes the
> > bdev_mutex in the regular block device open path, which takes
> > ctl_mutex in the pkt_open function which gets called then from
> > the block layer.
> >
> > HOWEVER the IOCTL path does it the other way around:
> >
> > mutex_lock(&ctl_mutex);
> > ret = pkt_setup_dev(&ctrl_cmd);
> > mutex_unlock(&ctl_mutex);
> >
> > where pkt_setup_dev in term calls pkt_new_dev which
> > calls blkdev_get(), which takes the bdev_mutex.
> >
> > Looks very much like a AB-BA deadlock to me...
>
> I don't understand how this could deadlock. If the device is already
> setup, pkt_new_dev() returns before calling blkdev_get(). If the
> device is not already setup, the block device doesn't exist yet so
> there can not be another caller in the pkt_open() path.

and what locking prevents this? And via multiple opens?