Re: [PATCH] mm/slab_common: Deleting kobject in kmem_cache_destroy() without holding slab_mutex/cpu_hotplug_lock

[Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz>]

On 8/22/22 15:46, Hyeonggon Yoo wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 22, 2022 at 02:03:33PM +0200, Vlastimil Babka wrote:
>> On 8/10/22 16:08, Waiman Long wrote:
>>> On 8/10/22 05:34, Vlastimil Babka wrote:
>>>> On 8/9/22 22:59, Waiman Long wrote:
>>>>> A circular locking problem is reported by lockdep due to the following
>>>>> circular locking dependency.
>>>>>
>>>>>    +--> cpu_hotplug_lock --> slab_mutex --> kn->active#126 --+
>>>>>    |                                                         |
>>>>>    +---------------------------------------------------------+
>>>>
>>>> This sounded familiar and I've found a thread from January:
>>>>
>>>> https://lore.kernel.org/all/388098b2c03fbf0a732834fc01b2d875c335bc49.1642170196.git.lucien.xin@gmail.com/
>>>>
>>>> But that seemed to be specific to RHEL-8 RT kernel and not reproduced with
>>>> mainline. Is it different this time? Can you share the splats?
>>>
>>> I think this is easier to reproduce on a RT kernel, but it also happens in a
>>> non-RT kernel. One example splat that I got was
>>>
>>> [ 1777.114757] ======================================================
>>> [ 1777.121646] WARNING: possible circular locking dependency detected
>>> [ 1777.128544] 4.18.0-403.el8.x86_64+debug #1 Not tainted
>>> [ 1777.134280] ------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Yeah that's non-RT, but still 4.18 kernel, as in Xin Long's thread
>> referenced above. That wasn't reproducible in current mainline and I would
>> expect yours also isn't, because it would be reported by others too.
> 
> I can confirm this splat is reproducible on 6.0-rc1 when conditions below are met:
> 	1) Lockdep is enabled
> 	2) kmem_cache_destroy() is executed at least once (e.g. loading slub_kunit module)
> 	3) flush_all() is executed at least once (e.g. writing to /sys/kernel/<slab>/cpu_partial)

Oh, great, that's useful, thanks!

...

> 
>> Also in both cases the lockdep (in 4.18) seems to have issue with
>> cpus_read_lock() which is a rwsem taken for read, so not really exclusive in
>> order to cause the reported deadlock.
> 
> Agreed.
> 
>> So I suspected lockdep was improved since 4.18 to not report a false
>> positive, but we never confirmed.
> 
> Seems not improved as it reports on 6.0-rc1.
> May fix lockdep instead of fixing SLUB?

So after discussing with PeterZ, the lockdep splat is legitimate,
because there could be a writer waiting on the first reader to finish,
and in that case rwsems block further readers so they don't starve the
writer, and thus the deadlock could happen.