Re: [BUG] 2.6.38-rc2: Circular Locking Dependency

Paul Mackerras
2011-02-07T10:43:24Z

On Mon, Feb 07, 2011 at 09:29:50PM +1100, Paul Mackerras wrote:

> We seem to have recursed in the ppp code because of (apparently)
> handling a softirq inside a spin_lock_bh region. :( If I understand
> the original report correctly, the stack trace looks like this in part:
>
> [<c04153eb>] net_rx_action+0x3f/0xfe
> [<c0128563>] __do_softirq+0x76/0xfd
> -> #1 (_xmit_NETROM){+.-...}:
> [<c01462b2>] lock_acquire+0x47/0x5e
> [<c0471c9c>] _raw_spin_lock_irqsave+0x2e/0x3e
> [<c040ed60>] skb_dequeue+0x12/0x4a
> [<f814c237>] ppp_channel_push+0x2e/0x94 [ppp_generic]
>
> So we were in ppp_channel_push, and the first thing it does is
> spin_lock_bh(&pch->downl), and then it calls skb_dequeue, which did a
> spin_lock_irqsave, and then somehow we get into __do_softirq. I
> thought spin_lock_bh should have stopped softirqs from running?

OK, I think I have misinterpreted the lockdep info in the original
message. If it's saying that we are trying to get ppp->rlock when we
have taken chan->downl, then that would indeed be a bug, since the lock
ordering as documented in the comments is ppp->rlock -> chan->downl.
I can't see in the code where that happens though and the lockdep
trace doesn't seem to be telling me either.

Paul.