Re: [RFC, PATCH] locks: remove posix deadlock detection

Trond Myklebust
2007-10-29T03:24:22Z

On Sun, 2007-10-28 at 16:41 -0600, Matthew Wilcox wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 28, 2007 at 05:50:30PM -0400, Trond Myklebust wrote:
> > > You can't fix the false EDEADLK detection without solving the halting
> > > problem. Best of luck with that.
> >
> > I can see that it would be difficult to do efficiently, but basically,
> > this boils down to finding a circular path in a graph. That is hardly an
> > unsolvable issue...
>
> Bzzt. You get a false deadlock with multiple threads like so:
>
> Thread A of task B takes lock 1
> Thread C of task D takes lock 2
> Thread C of task D blocks on lock 1
> Thread E of task B blocks on lock 2
>
> We currently declare deadlock at this point (unless the deadlock detection
> code has changed since I last looked at it), despite thread A being about
> to release lock 1. Oh, and by the way, thread E is capable of releasing
> lock 1, so you can't just say "well, detect by thread instead of by task".
>
> So the only way I can see to accurately detect deadlock is to simulate
> the future execution of all threads in task B to see if any of them
> will release lock 1 without first gaining lock 2. Which, I believe,
> is halting-equivalent.

As several people have told you, the SUSv3 section on fcntl and
deadlocks reads as follows:

"A potential for deadlock occurs if a process controlling a
locked region is put to sleep by attempting to lock another
process' locked region. If the system detects that sleeping
until a locked region is unlocked would cause a deadlock,
fcntl() shall fail with an [EDEADLK] error."

There is no mention there or anywhere else of a need to make exceptions
when dealing with threads. The posix locking model is _process_ based,
and so our deadlock detection only needs to take that into account.
If programmers choose to play tricksy little games with threads, then it
is their responsibility to ensure that the application doesn't get into
a situation where the posix deadlock detection model breaks down.

Trond