Re: [PATCH 2/3] mm: munlock: fix deadlock in __munlock_pagevec()

From: Vlastimil Babka
Date: Tue Dec 17 2013 - 08:08:27 EST


On 12/17/2013 01:31 AM, Andrew Morton wrote:
On Mon, 16 Dec 2013 11:14:15 +0100 Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@xxxxxxx> wrote:

Commit 7225522bb ("mm: munlock: batch non-THP page isolation and
munlock+putback using pagevec" introduced __munlock_pagevec() to speed up
munlock by holding lru_lock over multiple isolated pages. Pages that fail to
be isolated are put_back() immediately, also within the lock.

This can lead to deadlock when __munlock_pagevec() becomes the holder of the
last page pin and put_back() leads to __page_cache_release() which also locks
lru_lock. The deadlock has been observed by Sasha Levin using trinity.

This patch avoids the deadlock by deferring put_back() operations until
lru_lock is released. Another pagevec (which is also used by later phases
of the function is reused to gather the pages for put_back() operation.

...


Thanks for fixing this one. I'll cross it off the rather large list of
recent MM regressions :(

Well I made this one in the first place :/

--- a/mm/mlock.c
+++ b/mm/mlock.c
@@ -295,10 +295,12 @@ static void __munlock_pagevec(struct pagevec *pvec, struct zone *zone)
{
int i;
int nr = pagevec_count(pvec);
- int delta_munlocked = -nr;
+ int delta_munlocked;
struct pagevec pvec_putback;
int pgrescued = 0;

+ pagevec_init(&pvec_putback, 0);
+
/* Phase 1: page isolation */
spin_lock_irq(&zone->lru_lock);
for (i = 0; i < nr; i++) {
@@ -327,16 +329,22 @@ skip_munlock:
/*
* We won't be munlocking this page in the next phase
* but we still need to release the follow_page_mask()
- * pin.
+ * pin. We cannot do it under lru_lock however. If it's
+ * the last pin, __page_cache_release would deadlock.
*/
+ pagevec_add(&pvec_putback, pvec->pages[i]);
pvec->pages[i] = NULL;
- put_page(page);
- delta_munlocked++;
}
}
+ delta_munlocked = -nr + pagevec_count(&pvec_putback);
__mod_zone_page_state(zone, NR_MLOCK, delta_munlocked);
spin_unlock_irq(&zone->lru_lock);

+ /* Now we can release pins of pages that we are not munlocking */
+ for (i = 0; i < pagevec_count(&pvec_putback); i++) {
+ put_page(pvec_putback.pages[i]);
+ }
+

We could just do

--- a/mm/mlock.c~mm-munlock-fix-deadlock-in-__munlock_pagevec-fix
+++ a/mm/mlock.c
@@ -341,12 +341,9 @@ skip_munlock:
spin_unlock_irq(&zone->lru_lock);

/* Now we can release pins of pages that we are not munlocking */
- for (i = 0; i < pagevec_count(&pvec_putback); i++) {
- put_page(pvec_putback.pages[i]);
- }
+ pagevec_release(&pvec_putback);

/* Phase 2: page munlock */
- pagevec_init(&pvec_putback, 0);
for (i = 0; i < nr; i++) {
struct page *page = pvec->pages[i];


Yeah that looks nicer.

The lru_add_drain() is unnecessary overhead here. What do you think?

I would expect these isolation failures to be sufficiently rare so that it doesn't matter. Especially in process exit path which was the original target of my munlock work. But I don't have any numbers and my mmtests benchmark for munlock is most likely too simple to trigger this. But even once per pagevec the drain shouldn't hurt I guess...

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