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From: Chris Mason <mason@suse.com>
To: Marcelo Tosatti <marcelo@conectiva.com.br>
Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Possible deadlock with ->writepaged version of flush_dirty_buffers() and 2.4.0
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2001 10:43:04 -0500	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <517420000.979227784@tiny> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0101101742500.8441-100000@freak.distro.conectiva>



On Wednesday, January 10, 2001 05:56:09 PM -0200 Marcelo Tosatti
<marcelo@conectiva.com.br> wrote:

> 
> Hi Chris,
> 
> It seems there is a possible deadlock condition with your patch which
> changes flush_dirty_buffers() to use ->writepage (something which we
> _definately_ want for 2.5). Take a look:
> 
Yes, good catch.

> 
> mark_buffer_dirty->balance_dirty->wakeup_bdflush->flush_dirty_buffers->
> writepage->block_write_full_page->__block_write_full_page->get_block->
> ext2_get_block->ext2_alloc_branch->
> 
>	 ext2_alloc_block->ext2_new_block->lock_super
>	 or 
>	 getblk()->lock_super
> 
> 
> I dont see any reason why this deadlock could'nt happen in practice now.
> 
It won't happen until someone other than fs/buffer.c starts marking ext2
pages dirty.  The normal file write path will make sure that any dirty
buffers are mapped, so the ext2_get_block code is never run.

> If I'm right, it will pretty nasty to fix this. One possible solution is
> to _never_ call mark_buffer_dirty() with the superblock lock held (ext2
> has a lot of places likes this right now)
> 

This is probably the best solution, since it is a good idea regardless of
my patch.

-chris
 


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      reply	other threads:[~2001-01-11 15:43 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 2+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2001-01-10 19:56 Possible deadlock with ->writepaged version of flush_dirty_buffers() and 2.4.0 Marcelo Tosatti
2001-01-11 15:43 ` Chris Mason [this message]

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