Re: [RFC] locking/rwsem: Avoid issuing wakeup before setting the reader waiter to nil

Waiman Long
2018-11-29T15:22:03Z

On 11/29/2018 08:12 AM, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> +Cc davidlohr and waiman
>
> On Thu, Nov 29, 2018 at 08:50:30PM +0800, Yongji Xie wrote:
>> From: Xie Yongji <xieyongji@baidu.com>
>>
>> Our system encountered a problem recently, the khungtaskd detected
>> some process hang on mmap_sem. But the odd thing was that one task which
>> is not on mmap_sem.wait_list still sleeps in rwsem_down_read_failed().
>> Through code inspection, we found a potential bug can lead to this.
>>
>> Imaging this:
>>
>> Thread 1 Thread 2
>> down_write();
>> rwsem_down_read_failed()
>> raw_spin_lock_irq(&sem->wait_lock);
>> list_add_tail(&waiter.list, &wait_list);
>> raw_spin_unlock_irq(&sem->wait_lock);
>> __up_write();
>> rwsem_wake();
>> __rwsem_mark_wake();
>> wake_q_add();
>> list_del(&waiter->list);
>> waiter->task = NULL;
>> while (true) {
>> set_current_state(TASK_UNINTERRUPTIBLE);
>> if (!waiter.task) // true
>> break;
>> }
>> __set_current_state(TASK_RUNNING);
>>
>> Now Thread 1 is queued in Thread 2's wake_q without sleeping. Then
>> Thread 1 call rwsem_down_read_failed() again because Thread 3
>> hold the lock, if Thread 3 tries to queue Thread 1 before Thread 2
>> do wakeup, it will fail and miss wakeup:
>>
>> Thread 1 Thread 2 Thread 3
>> down_write();
>> rwsem_down_read_failed()
>> raw_spin_lock_irq(&sem->wait_lock);
>> list_add_tail(&waiter.list, &wait_list);
>> raw_spin_unlock_irq(&sem->wait_lock);
>> __rwsem_mark_wake();
>> wake_q_add();
>> wake_up_q();
>> waiter->task = NULL;
>> while (true) {
>> set_current_state(TASK_UNINTERRUPTIBLE);
>> if (!waiter.task) // false
>> break;
>> schedule();
>> }
>> wake_up_q(&wake_q);
>>
>> In another word, that means we might issue the wakeup before setting the reader
>> waiter to nil. If so, the wakeup may do nothing when it was called before reader
>> set task state to TASK_UNINTERRUPTIBLE. Then we would have no chance to wake up
>> the reader any more, and cause other writers such as "ps" command stuck on it.
>>
>> This patch is not verified because we still have no way to reproduce the problem.
>> But I'd like to ask for some comments from community firstly.
> Urgh; so the case where the cmpxchg() fails because it already has a
> wakeup in progress, which then 'violates' our expectation of when the
> wakeup happens.
>
> Yes, I think this is real, and worse, I think we need to go audit all
> wake_q_add() users and document this behaviour.

Yes, I also think this is a valid race scenario that can cause missed
wakeup. Actually, I had bug reports of similar symptom of sleeping
reader not in a wait queue.  I was puzzled by how that could happen.
That clearly is one possible cause of that.

> In the ideal case we'd delay the actual wakeup to the last wake_up_q(),
> but I don't think we can easily fix that.
>
>> Signed-off-by: Xie Yongji <xieyongji@baidu.com>
>> Signed-off-by: Zhang Yu <zhangyu31@baidu.com>
>> ---
>> kernel/locking/rwsem-xadd.c | 11 +++++++++--
>> 1 file changed, 9 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
>>
>> diff --git a/kernel/locking/rwsem-xadd.c b/kernel/locking/rwsem-xadd.c
>> index 09b1800..50d9af6 100644
>> --- a/kernel/locking/rwsem-xadd.c
>> +++ b/kernel/locking/rwsem-xadd.c
>> @@ -198,15 +198,22 @@ static void __rwsem_mark_wake(struct rw_semaphore *sem,
>> woken++;
>> tsk = waiter->task;
>>
>> - wake_q_add(wake_q, tsk);
>> + get_task_struct(tsk);
>> list_del(&waiter->list);
>> /*
>> - * Ensure that the last operation is setting the reader
>> + * Ensure calling get_task_struct() before setting the reader
>> * waiter to nil such that rwsem_down_read_failed() cannot
>> * race with do_exit() by always holding a reference count
>> * to the task to wakeup.
>> */
>> smp_store_release(&waiter->task, NULL);
>> + /*
>> + * Ensure issuing the wakeup (either by us or someone else)
>> + * after setting the reader waiter to nil.
>> + */
>> + wake_q_add(wake_q, tsk);
>> + /* wake_q_add() already take the task ref */
>> + put_task_struct(tsk);
>> }
>>
>> adjustment = woken * RWSEM_ACTIVE_READ_BIAS - adjustment;

I doubt putting wake_q_add() after clearing waiter->task can really fix
the problem. The wake_up_q() function happens asynchronous to the
detection of NULL waiter->task in __rwsem_down_read_failed_common(). I
believe the same scenario may still happen.

One possible solution that I can think of is as follows:

diff --git a/include/linux/sched/wake_q.h b/include/linux/sched/wake_q.h
index 10b19a1..1513cdc 100644
--- a/include/linux/sched/wake_q.h
+++ b/include/linux/sched/wake_q.h
@@ -47,6 +47,14 @@ static inline void wake_q_init(struct wake_q_head *head)
head->lastp = &head->first;
}

+/*
+ * Return true if the current task is on a wake_q.
+ */
+static inline bool wake_q_pending(void)
+{
+       return !!current->wake_q.next;
+}
+
extern void wake_q_add(struct wake_q_head *head,
struct task_struct *task);
extern void wake_up_q(struct wake_q_head *head);
diff --git a/kernel/locking/rwsem-xadd.c b/kernel/locking/rwsem-xadd.c
index 3dbe593..b656777 100644
--- a/kernel/locking/rwsem-xadd.c
+++ b/kernel/locking/rwsem-xadd.c
@@ -269,7 +269,7 @@ static void __rwsem_mark_wake(struct rw_semaphore *sem,
/* wait to be given the lock */
while (true) {
set_current_state(state);
-               if (!waiter.task)
+               if (!smp_load_acquire(&waiter.task))
break;
if (signal_pending_state(state, current)) {
raw_spin_lock_irq(&sem->wait_lock);
@@ -282,6 +282,15 @@ static void __rwsem_mark_wake(struct rw_semaphore *sem,
}

__set_current_state(TASK_RUNNING);
+
+       /*
+        * If waiter is still queuing in a wake_q somewhere, we have to wait
+        * until the wake_up_q() process is complete as the memory of the
+        * waiter structure will no longer be valid when we return.
+        */
+       while (wake_q_pending())
+               cpu_relax();
+
return sem;
out_nolock:
list_del(&waiter.list);