Re: [PATCH] context_tracking: Restore previous state in schedule_user

Andy Lutomirski
2014-12-04T00:04:54Z

On Wed, Dec 3, 2014 at 3:58 PM, Frederic Weisbecker <fweisbec@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 03, 2014 at 03:18:41PM -0800, Andy Lutomirski wrote:
>> It appears that some SCHEDULE_USER (asm for schedule_user) callers
>> in arch/x86/kernel/entry_64.S are called from RCU kernel context,
>> and schedule_user will return in RCU user context. This causes RCU
>> warnings and possible failures.
>>
>> This is intended to be a minimal fix suitable for 3.18.
>>
>> Reported-by: Dave Jones <davej@redhat.com>
>> Cc: Oleg Nesterov <oleg@redhat.com>
>> Cc: Frédéric Weisbecker <fweisbec@gmail.com>
>> Cc: Paul McKenney <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
>> Signed-off-by: Andy Lutomirski <luto@amacapital.net>
>
> Ah, we sent it about at the same time :-)
>
> Might be too late for 3.18 though because it's not a regression.
>
>> ---
>>
>> Hi all-
>>
>> This is intended to be a suitable last-minute fix for the RCU issue that
>> Dave saw.
>>
>> Dave, can you confirm that this fixes it?
>>
>> Frédéric, can you confirm that you think that this will have no effect
>> on correct callers of schedule_user and that will do the right thing
>> for incorrect callers of schedule_user?
>
> Yes it should be fine.
>
>>
>> I don't like the x86 asm that calls this at all, and I don't really
>> like the fragility of the mechanism is general, but I think that this
>> improves the situation enough to avoid problems in the short term.
>
> At best we should have only one call to user_enter() at the end of the
> syscall and exception path once we've completed everything (pending reschedule,
> tracing, signals, ...) instead of context tracking fixups on functions that
> can be called after syscall_trace_leave(), but that would impact the fastpath.
>
> Although it should be possible to tweak the slow path to do that...

My eventual goal for x86 is rewrite the entire slow path in C. Step
1: delete sysret_audit, etc.

>
>>
>> With the obvious warning added, I get:
>>
>> [ 0.751022] ------------[ cut here ]------------
>> [ 0.751937] WARNING: CPU: 0 PID: 72 at kernel/sched/core.c:2883 schedule_user+0xcf/0xe0()
>> [ 0.753477] Modules linked in:
>> [ 0.754089] CPU: 0 PID: 72 Comm: mount Not tainted 3.18.0-rc7+ #653
>> [ 0.755258] Hardware name: QEMU Standard PC (i440FX + PIIX, 1996), BIOS rel-1.7.5-0-ge51488c-20140602_164612-nilsson.home.kraxel.org 04/01/2014
>> [ 0.757655] 0000000000000009 ffff880005c13f00 ffffffff81741dca ffff8800069f5a50
>> [ 0.759228] 0000000000000000 ffff880005c13f40 ffffffff8108e781 0000000000000246
>> [ 0.760758] 0000000000000000 00007fff970441c8 00007fff97043fd0 00007f67794ebcc8
>> [ 0.762294] Call Trace:
>> [ 0.762775] [<ffffffff81741dca>] dump_stack+0x46/0x58
>> [ 0.763739] [<ffffffff8108e781>] warn_slowpath_common+0x81/0xa0
>> [ 0.764865] [<ffffffff8108e85a>] warn_slowpath_null+0x1a/0x20
>> [ 0.765958] [<ffffffff8174565f>] schedule_user+0xcf/0xe0
>> [ 0.766974] [<ffffffff8174ae69>] sysret_careful+0x19/0x1c
>> [ 0.768011] ---[ end trace 329f34db2b3be966 ]---
>>
>> So, yes, we have a bug, and this could cause any number of strange
>> problems.
>>
>> kernel/sched/core.c | 8 ++++++--
>> 1 file changed, 6 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
>>
>> diff --git a/kernel/sched/core.c b/kernel/sched/core.c
>> index 24beb9bb4c3e..39d9d95331b7 100644
>> --- a/kernel/sched/core.c
>> +++ b/kernel/sched/core.c
>> @@ -2874,10 +2874,14 @@ asmlinkage __visible void __sched schedule_user(void)
>> * or we have been woken up remotely but the IPI has not yet arrived,
>> * we haven't yet exited the RCU idle mode. Do it here manually until
>> * we find a better solution.
>
> Just need to fix the above comment.
>
>> + *
>> + * NB: There are buggy callers of this function. Ideally we
>> + * should warn if prev_state != IN_USER, but that will trigger
>> + * to frequently to make sense yet.
>
> It's not really the callers of this function that are buggy but the
> way we handled context tracking.

Yeah, one could debate exactly where the bug is.

Anyway, if you're doing this for 3.19, adding a WARN_ON_ONCE and
trying to fix the callers might make sense.

--Andy

>
>> */
>> - user_exit();
>> + enum ctx_state prev_state = exception_enter();
>> schedule();
>> - user_enter();
>> + exception_exit(prev_state);
>> }
>> #endif
>>
>> --
>> 1.9.3
>>

--
Andy Lutomirski
AMA Capital Management, LLC