Re: [PATCH V4 resend] lib/group_cpus.c: avoid to acquire cpu hotplug lock in group_cpus_evenly

[Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>]

On Mon, 20 Nov 2023 16:35:59 +0800 Ming Lei <ming.lei@redhat.com> wrote:

> group_cpus_evenly() could be part of storage driver's error handler,
> such as nvme driver, when may happen during CPU hotplug, in which
> storage queue has to drain its pending IOs because all CPUs associated
> with the queue are offline and the queue is becoming inactive. And
> handling IO needs error handler to provide forward progress.
> 
> Then dead lock is caused:
> 
> 1) inside CPU hotplug handler, CPU hotplug lock is held, and blk-mq's
> handler is waiting for inflight IO
> 
> 2) error handler is waiting for CPU hotplug lock
> 
> 3) inflight IO can't be completed in blk-mq's CPU hotplug handler because
> error handling can't provide forward progress.
> 
> Solve the deadlock by not holding CPU hotplug lock in group_cpus_evenly(),
> in which two stage spreads are taken: 1) the 1st stage is over all present
> CPUs; 2) the end stage is over all other CPUs.
> 
> Turns out the two stage spread just needs consistent 'cpu_present_mask', and
> remove the CPU hotplug lock by storing it into one local cache. This way
> doesn't change correctness, because all CPUs are still covered.

I'm not sure what is the intended merge path for this, but I can do lib/.

Do you think that a -stable backport is needed?  It sounds that way.

If so, are we able to identify a suitable Fixes: target?  That would
predate f7b3ea8cf72f3 ("genirq/affinity: Move group_cpus_evenly() into
lib/").