Re: [BUG] sg.c: sleeping function called from invalid context

From: James Bottomley
Date: Thu Oct 01 2009 - 16:25:43 EST


On Thu, 2009-10-01 at 15:59 -0400, Douglas Gilbert wrote:
> iceberg wrote:
> > KERNEL_VERSION: 2.6.31
> > DESCRIBE:
> > Driver sg.c might sleep in atomic context, because it calls
> > scsi_device_put under lock_kernel.
> >
> > /drivers/scsi/sg.c:306:
> > static int
> > sg_open(struct inode *inode, struct file *filp)
> > {
> > ...
> > lock_kernel();
> > ...
> > error_out:
> > if (retval)
> > scsi_device_put(sdp->device);
> > ...
> >
> > Path to might_sleep macro from scsi_device_put:
> > 1. scsi_device_put calls put_device at ./drivers/scsi/scsi.c:1111
> > 2. put_device calls kobject_put at ./drivers/base/core.c:1038
> > 3. kobject_put calls kref_put at ./lib/kobject.c
> > 4. kref_put may call callback function kobject_release at ./lib/kref.c if
> > refcount becomes zero, which might_sleep because it calls user event. Details:
> > 5.1 kobject_cleanup calls kobject_uevent at ./lib/kobject.c:555
> > 5.2 kobject_uevent calls kobject_uevent_env at ./lib/kobject_uevent.c:282
> > 5.3 kobject_uevent_env calls call_usermodehelper_exec at
> > include/linux/kmod.h:83
> > 5.4 call_usermodehelper_exec calls wait_for_completion at ./kernel/kmod.c:481
> > 5.5 wait_for_completion calls wait_for_common at ./kernel/sched.c:5710
> > 5.6 wait_for_common calls might_sleep at ./kernels/sched.c:5692
> >
> > Found by: Linux Driver Verification
>
> This patch to sg_open() does one (and only one) unlock_kernel()
> prior to scsi_device_put(). I presume sg_put_dev() may also
> sleep so the unlock_kernel() is moved before it as well.
>
> Hopefully Tomo will comment.

Really, this isn't a bug, so no fix is required.

The analysis is wrong on two levels. Firstly scsi_device_put() is
designed to be called from interrupt/locked context and secondly
lock_kernel isn't actually a lock taking interrupt context anyway. The
BLK is a strange beast; it's recursive and it's actually transparently
dropped and reacquired over schedule, so you can sleep by design with
the BKL held.

James


--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/