Reading through the code and studying how mem_hotplug_lock is to be used,
I noticed that there are two places where we can end up calling
device_online()/device_offline() - online_pages()/offline_pages() without
the mem_hotplug_lock. And there are other places where we call
device_online()/device_offline() without the device_hotplug_lock.
While e.g.
echo "online" > /sys/devices/system/memory/memory9/state
is fine, e.g.
echo 1 > /sys/devices/system/memory/memory9/online
Will not take the mem_hotplug_lock. However the device_lock() and
device_hotplug_lock.
E.g. via memory_probe_store(), we can end up calling
add_memory()->online_pages() without the device_hotplug_lock. So we can
have concurrent callers in online_pages(). We e.g. touch in online_pages()
basically unprotected zone->present_pages then.
Looks like there is a longer history to that (see Patch #2 for details),
and fixing it to work the way it was intended is not really possible. We
would e.g. have to take the mem_hotplug_lock in device/base/core.c, which
sounds wrong.
Summary: We had a lock inversion on mem_hotplug_lock and device_lock().
More details can be found in patch 3 and patch 6.
I propose the general rules (documentation added in patch 6):
1. add_memory/add_memory_resource() must only be called with
device_hotplug_lock.
2. remove_memory() must only be called with device_hotplug_lock. This is
already documented and holds for all callers.
3. device_online()/device_offline() must only be called with
device_hotplug_lock. This is already documented and true for now in core
code. Other callers (related to memory hotplug) have to be fixed up.
4. mem_hotplug_lock is taken inside of add_memory/remove_memory/
online_pages/offline_pages.
To me, this looks way cleaner than what we have right now (and easier to
verify). And looking at the documentation of remove_memory, using
lock_device_hotplug also for add_memory() feels natural.
RFCv2 -> v1:
- Dropped an unnecessary _ref from remove_memory() in patch #1
- Minor patch description fixes.
- Added rb's
RFC -> RFCv2:
- Don't export device_hotplug_lock, provide proper remove_memory/add_memory
wrappers.
- Split up the patches a bit.
- Try to improve powernv memtrace locking
- Add some documentation for locking that matches my knowledge
David Hildenbrand (6):
mm/memory_hotplug: make remove_memory() take the device_hotplug_lock
mm/memory_hotplug: make add_memory() take the device_hotplug_lock
mm/memory_hotplug: fix online/offline_pages called w.o.
mem_hotplug_lock
powerpc/powernv: hold device_hotplug_lock when calling device_online()
powerpc/powernv: hold device_hotplug_lock in memtrace_offline_pages()
memory-hotplug.txt: Add some details about locking internals
Documentation/memory-hotplug.txt | 39 +++++++++++-
arch/powerpc/platforms/powernv/memtrace.c | 14 +++--
.../platforms/pseries/hotplug-memory.c | 8 +--
drivers/acpi/acpi_memhotplug.c | 4 +-
drivers/base/memory.c | 22 +++----
drivers/xen/balloon.c | 3 +
include/linux/memory_hotplug.h | 4 +-
mm/memory_hotplug.c | 59 +++++++++++++++----
8 files changed, 115 insertions(+), 38 deletions(-)
--
2.17.1