Re: [PATCH] md / procfs: avoid Oops if md-mod removed while /proc/mdstat is being polled.

[NeilBrown <neilb@suse.de>]

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On Thu, 27 Feb 2014 13:51:25 -0800 Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
wrote:

> On Fri, 28 Feb 2014 08:34:43 +1100 NeilBrown <neilb@suse.de> wrote:
> 
> > On Thu, 27 Feb 2014 12:58:07 -0800 Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
> > wrote:
> > 
> > > On Thu, 27 Feb 2014 17:24:45 +1100 NeilBrown <neilb@suse.de> wrote:
> > > 
> > > > If poll or select is waiting on /proc/mdstat when md-mod is unloaded
> > > > an oops will ensure when the poll/select completes.
> > > > 
> > > > This is because the wait_queue_head which is registered with poll_wait()
> > > > is local to the module and no longer exists when the poll completes and
> > > > detaches that wait_queue_head (in poll_free_wait -> remove_wait_queue).
> > > > 
> > > > To fix this we need the wait_queue_head to have (at least) the same life
> > > > time as the proc_dir_entry.  So this patch places it in that structure.
> > > > 
> > > > We:
> > > >   - add pde_poll_wait to struct proc_dir_entry
> > > >   - call poll_wait() passing this when poll() is called on the proc file
> > > >   - export a function proc_wake_up which will call wake_up() on pde_poll_wait
> > > > 
> > > > and make use of all that in md.c
> > > 
> > > This sounds wrong.  If a userspace process is waiting on
> > > md_event_waiters then the md module is "busy" and the rmmod attempt
> > > should fail?
> > 
> > Al Viro says "no" quite firmly.
> > 
> > I think the core argument is that
> > 
> >   rmmod md-mod < /proc/mdstat
> > 
> > would deadlock.
> 
> Well, only if the rmmod hangs around waiting for the module to go idle.
> I'm thinking rmmod should fail.  EBUSY.
> 
> > http://marc.info/?l=linux-fsdevel&m=133024267507384
> 
> Why don't a billion blocking-procfs-read sites have this problem?
> 

This issue of a file in /proc (actually /proc/fs/nfsd which is a separate
filesystem) blocking came up on the NFS list recently.
Experiments suggested that no other files in /proc block reads
(though /proc/vmcore takes somewhat longer to 'cat' than most).
So the offending file was changed to never block.

i.e. I think your 'billion' estimate is a little high, by one billion.
:-)

NeilBrown

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