Re: [PATCH 0/2] fsnotify: fix softlockups iterating over d_subdirs

Stephen Brennan
2022-10-18T23:53:00Z

Amir Goldstein <amir73il@gmail.com> writes:
> On Tue, Oct 18, 2022 at 7:12 AM Stephen Brennan
> <stephen.s.brennan@oracle.com> wrote:
>>
>> Hi Jan, Amir, Al,
>>
>> Here's my first shot at implementing what we discussed. I tested it using the
>> negative dentry creation tool I mentioned in my previous message, with a similar
>> workflow. Rather than having a bunch of threads accessing the directory to
>> create that "thundering herd" of CPUs in __fsnotify_update_child_dentry_flags, I
>> just started a lot of inotifywait tasks:
>>
>> 1. Create 100 million negative dentries in a dir
>> 2. Use trace-cmd to watch __fsnotify_update_child_dentry_flags:
>> trace-cmd start -p function_graph -l __fsnotify_update_child_dentry_flags
>> sudo cat /sys/kernel/debug/tracing/trace_pipe
>> 3. Run a lot of inotifywait tasks: for i in {1..10} inotifywait $dir & done
>>
>> With step #3, I see only one execution of __fsnotify_update_child_dentry_flags.
>> Once that completes, all the inotifywait tasks say "Watches established".
>> Similarly, once an access occurs in the directory, a single
>> __fsnotify_update_child_dentry_flags execution occurs, and all the tasks exit.
>> In short: it works great!
>>
>> However, while testing this, I've observed a dentry still in use warning during
>> unmount of rpc_pipefs on the "nfs" dentry during shutdown. NFS is of course in
>> use, and I assume that fsnotify must have been used to trigger this. The error
>> is not there on mainline without my patch so it's definitely caused by this
>> code. I'll continue debugging it but I wanted to share my first take on this so
>> you could take a look.
>>
>> [ 1595.197339] BUG: Dentry 000000005f5e7197{i=67,n=nfs} still in use (2) [unmount of rpc_pipefs rpc_pipefs]
>>
>
> Hmm, the assumption we made about partial stability of d_subdirs
> under dir inode lock looks incorrect for rpc_pipefs.
> None of the functions that update the rpc_pipefs dcache take the parent
> inode lock.

That may be, but I'm confused how that would trigger this issue. If I'm
understanding correctly, this warning indicates a reference counting
bug.

If __fsnotify_update_child_dentry_flags() had gone to sleep and the list
were edited, then it seems like there could be only two possibilities
that could cause bugs:

1. The dentry we slept holding a reference to was removed from the list,
and maybe moved to a different one, or just removed. If that were the
case, we're quite unlucky, because we'll start looping indefinitely as
we'll never get back to the beginning of the list, or worse.

2. A dentry adjacent to the one we held a reference to was removed. In
that case, our dentry's d_child pointers should get rearranged, and when
we wake, we should see those updates and continue.

In neither of those cases do I understand where we could have done a
dget() unpaired with a dput(), which is what seemingly would trigger
this issue.

I'm probably wrong, but without understanding the mechanism behind the
error, I'm not sure how to approach it.

> The assumption looks incorrect for other pseudo fs as well.
>
> The other side of the coin is that we do not really need to worry
> about walking a huge list of pseudo fs children.
>
> The question is how to classify those pseudo fs and whether there
> are other cases like this that we missed.
>
> Perhaps having simple_dentry_operationsis a good enough
> clue, but perhaps it is not enough. I am not sure.
>
> It covers all the cases of pseudo fs that I know about, so you
> can certainly use this clue to avoid going to sleep in the
> update loop as a first approximation.

I would worry that it would become an exercise of whack-a-mole.
Allow/deny-listing certain filesystems for certain behavior seems scary.

> I can try to figure this out, but I prefer that Al will chime in to
> provide reliable answers to those questions.

I have a core dump from the warning (with panic_on_warn=1) and will see
if I can trace or otherwise identify the exact mechanism myself.

> Thanks,
> Amir.
>

Thanks for your detailed review of both the patches. I didn't get much
time today to update the patches and test them. Your feedback looks very
helpful though, and I'll hope to send out an updated revision tomorrow.

In the absolute worst case (and I don't want to concede defeat just
yet), keeping patch 1 without patch 2 (sleepable iteration) would still
be a major win, since it resolves the thundering herd problem which is
what compounds problem of the long lists.

Thanks!
Stephen