Re: [KVM PATCH v2 2/2] kvm: use POLLHUP to close an irqfd instead of an explicit ioctl

Gregory Haskins
2009-06-18T12:00:59Z

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2850 bytes --]

Michael S. Tsirkin wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 18, 2009 at 02:46:30PM +0930, Rusty Russell wrote:
>
>> On Mon, 15 Jun 2009 10:24:39 pm Michael S. Tsirkin wrote:
>>
>>> On Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 08:08:18AM -0400, Gregory Haskins wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hmm. I understand what you are saying conceptually (i.e. the .text
>>>> could get yanked before we hit the next line of code, in this case the
>>>> "return 0"). However, holding a reference when you _know_ someone else
>>>> holds a reference to me says that one of the references is redundant.
>>>> In addition, there is certainly plenty of precedence for
>>>> module_put(THIS_MODULE) all throughout the kernel (including
>>>> module_put_and_exit()). Are those broken as well?
>>>>
>>> Maybe not, but I don't know why. It works fine as long as you don't
>>> unload any modules though :) Rusty, could you enlighten us please?
>>>
>> Yep, they're almost all broken. A few have comments indicating that someone
>> else is holding a reference (eg. loopback).
>>
>> But at some point you give up playing whack-a-mole for random drivers.
>>
>> module_put_and_exit() does *not* have this problem, BTW.
>>
>> Rusty.
>>
>
> I see that, the .text for module_put_and_exit is never modular itself.
> Thanks, Rusty!
>

Ah! That is the trick I wasn't understanding.
> BTW, Gregory, this can be used to fix the race in the design: create a
> thread and let it drop the module reference with module_put_and_exit.
>

I had thought of doing something like this initially too, but I think
its racy as well. Ultimately, you need to make sure the eventfd
callback is completely out before its safe to run, and deferring to a
thread would not change this race. The only sane way I can see to do
that is to have the caller infrastructure annotate the event somehow
(either directly with a module_put(), or indirectly with some kind of
state transition that can be tracked with something like
synchronize_sched().
> Which will work, but I guess at this point we should ask ourselves
> whether all the hearburn with srcu, threads and module references is
> better than just asking the user to call and ioctl.
>

I am starting to agree with you, here. :)

Note one thing: the SRCU stuff is mostly orthogonal from the rest of the
conversation re: the module_put() races. I only tied it into the
current thread because the eventfd_notifier_register() thread gave me a
convenient way to hook some other context to do the module_put(). In
the long term, the srcu changes are for the can_sleep() stuff. So on
that note, lets see if I can convince Davide that the srcu stuff is not
so evil before we revert the POLLHUP patches, since the module_put() fix
is trivial once that is in place.

Thanks Michael (and Rusty),
-Greg

[-- Attachment #2: OpenPGP digital signature --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 266 bytes --]