Re: [PATCH] USB: serial: fix sysfs-attribute removal deadlock

[Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org>]

On Thu, Apr 24, 2014 at 04:29:15PM +0800, Li Zhong wrote:
> On Wed, 2014-04-23 at 10:19 -0400, Tejun Heo wrote:
> > cc'ing Li Zhong who's working on a simliar issue in the following
> > thread and quoting whole body.
> > 
> >   http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/1680706
> > 
> > Li, this is another variation of the same problem.  Maybe this can be
> > covered by your work too?
> 
> It seems to me that it is about write something to driver attribute, and
> driver unloading. If so, maybe it's not easy to reuse the help functions
> created for device attribute, and device removing.
> 
> But I guess the idea to break the active protection could still be
> applied here:
> 
> Maybe we could try_module_get() here (like the other option suggested by
> Johan?), and break active protection if we could get the module,
> something like below? 

I don't get why try_module_get() matters here.  We can't call into
->store if the object at hand is already destroyed and the underlying
module can't go away if the target device is still alive.
try_module_get() doesn't actually protect the object.  Why does that
matter?  This is self removal, right?  Can you please take a look at
kernfs_remove_self()?

Thanks.

-- 
tejun