Re: [PATCH-block v2 3/3] blk-cgroup: Flush stats at blkgs destruction path

Tejun Heo
2022-12-12T22:24:09Z

On Sun, Dec 11, 2022 at 05:20:58PM -0500, Waiman Long wrote:
> As noted by Michal, the blkg_iostat_set's in the lockless list
> hold reference to blkg's to protect against their removal. Those
> blkg's hold reference to blkcg. When a cgroup is being destroyed,
> cgroup_rstat_flush() is only called at css_release_work_fn() which is
> called when the blkcg reference count reaches 0. This circular dependency
> will prevent blkcg from being freed until some other events cause
> cgroup_rstat_flush() to be called to flush out the pending blkcg stats.
>
> To prevent this delayed blkcg removal, add a new cgroup_rstat_css_flush()
> function to flush stats for a given css and cpu and call it at the blkgs
> destruction path, blkcg_destroy_blkgs(), whenever there are still some
> pending stats to be flushed. This will ensure that blkcg reference
> count can reach 0 ASAP.
>
> Signed-off-by: Waiman Long <longman@redhat.com>

Acked-by: Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org>

But a nit below

> + /*
> + * Flush all the non-empty percpu lockless lists.
> + */

Can you please explain the deadlock that's being avoided in the above
comment? ie. it should say why this flush is necessary.

> + for_each_possible_cpu(cpu) {
> + struct llist_head *lhead = per_cpu_ptr(blkcg->lhead, cpu);
> +
> + if (!llist_empty(lhead))
> + cgroup_rstat_css_cpu_flush(&blkcg->css, cpu);
> + }

Thanks.

--
tejun