Re: [PATCH] zram: fix possible race when checking idle_strm

Minchan Kim
2015-08-10T23:26:44Z

Hi Joonsoo,

On Mon, Aug 10, 2015 at 09:32:30AM +0900, Joonsoo Kim wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 07, 2015 at 06:58:16PM +0900, Sergey Senozhatsky wrote:
> > On (08/07/15 18:14), Sergey Senozhatsky wrote:
> > > hm... I need to think about it more.
> > >
> > > we do wake_up every time we put stream back to the list
> > >
> > > zcomp_strm_multi_release():
> > >
> > > spin_lock(&zs->strm_lock);
> > > if (zs->avail_strm <= zs->max_strm) {
> > > list_add(&zstrm->list, &zs->idle_strm);
> > > spin_unlock(&zs->strm_lock);
> > > wake_up(&zs->strm_wait);
> > > return;
> > > }
> > >
> > >
> > > but I can probably see what you mean... in some very extreme case,
> > > though. I can't even formulate it... eh... we use a multi stream
> > > backend with ->max_strm == 1 and there are two processes, one
> > > just falsely passed the wait_event() `if (condition)' check, the
> > > other one just put stream back to ->idle_strm and called wake_up(),
> > > but the first process hasn't yet executed prepare_to_wait_event()
> > > so it might miss a wakeup. and there should be no other process
> > > doing read or write operation. otherwise, there will be wakeup
> > > eventually.
> > >
> > > is this the case you were thinking of?... then yes, this spinlock
> > > may help.
> > >
> >
> > on the other hand... it's actually
> >
> > wait_event() is
> >
> > if (condition)
> > break;
> > prepare_to_wait_event(&wq, &__wait, state)
> > if (condition)
> > break;
> > schedule();
> >
> > if first condition check was false and we missed a wakeup call between
> > first condition and prepare_to_wait_event(), then second condition
> > check should do the trick I think (or you expect that second condition
> > check may be wrongly pre-fetched or something).
>
> Hello, Sergey.
>
> This is what I thought.
> I expected that second condition can be false if compiler reuse result
> of first check for optimization. I guess that there is no prevention
> for this kind of optimization.
>
> So, following is the problem sequence I thought.
> T1 means thread 1, T2 means another thread, 2.
>
> <T1-1> check if idle_strm is empty or not with holding the lock
> <T1-2> It is empty so do spin_unlock and run wait_event macro
> <T1-3> check if idle_strm is empty or not
> <T1-4> It is still empty
>
> <T2-1> do strm release
> <T2-2> call wake_up
>
> <T1-5> add T1 to wait queue
> <T1-6> check if idle_strm is empty or not
> <T1-7> compiler reuse <T1-4>'s result or CPU just fetch cached
> result so T1 starts waiting
>
> In this case, T1 can be sleep permanently. To prevent compiler
> optimization or fetching cached value, we need a lock here.

When I read Documentation/memory-barrier.txt, it shouldn't happen.

"All memory barriers except the data dependency barriers imply a compiler
barrier. Data dependencies do not impose any additional compiler ordering."

"SLEEP AND WAKE-UP FUNCTIONS
---------------------------

Sleeping and waking on an event flagged in global data ...
...
...
...

A general memory barrier is interpolated automatically by set_current_state()
after it has altered the task state:"

So I think your T1-7 assumption is not true.

As well, there are many examples under drivers/ to use the global data
as event flag without locking or atomic.

Just in case, Ccing Paul and Peter.