Re: [Xen-devel] [PATCH] x86: xen: size struct xen_spinlock to always fit in arch_spinlock_t

[Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk <konrad@darnok.org>]

On Mon, Jan 23, 2012 at 09:44:33PM +0000, David Vrabel wrote:
> On 23/01/2012 19:50, Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk wrote:
> >On Mon, Jan 23, 2012 at 07:32:25PM +0000, David Vrabel wrote:
> >>From: David Vrabel<david.vrabel@citrix.com>
> >>
> >>If NR_CPUS<  256 then arch_spinlock_t is only 16 bits wide but struct
> >>xen_spinlock is 32 bits.  When a spin lock is contended and
> >>xl->spinners is modified the two bytes immediately after the spin lock
> >>would be corrupted.
> >>
> >>This is a regression caused by 84eb950db13ca40a0572ce9957e14723500943d6
> >>(x86, ticketlock: Clean up types and accessors) which reduced the size
> >>of arch_spinlock_t.
> >>
> >>Fix this by making xl->spinners a u8 if NR_CPUS<  256.  A
> >>BUILD_BUG_ON() is also added to check the sizes of the two structures
> >>are compatible.
> >>
> >>In many cases this was not noticable as there would often be padding
> >>bytes after the lock (e.g., if any of CONFIG_GENERIC_LOCKBREAK,
> >>CONFIG_DEBUG_SPINLOCK, or CONFIG_DEBUG_LOCK_ALLOC were enabled).
> >>
> >>The bnx2 driver is affected. In struct bnx2, phy_lock and
> >>indirect_lock may have no padding after them.  Contention on phy_lock
> >>would corrupt indirect_lock making it appear locked and the driver
> >>would deadlock.
> >
> >Nice find. I think it also affected the ahci driver, and some of the USB
> >ones - at least those I saw starting to hang with:
> 
> It's possible but keep in mind that this isn't a recent regression.  I 
> think it's been around since 3.0 and maybe even earlier.

konrad@phenom:~/work/linux.mm$ git tag --contains 84eb950db13ca40a0572ce9957e14723500943d6 | grep -v rc
v3.2

So since v3.2, hmm, I should double-check those serial logs
to see if the problems I had were in 3.2 as well.