Re: WARNING: possible circular locking dependency detected

From: Peter Zijlstra
Date: Mon Aug 28 2017 - 11:06:26 EST


On Mon, Aug 28, 2017 at 04:58:08PM +0200, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 25, 2017 at 12:03:04PM +0200, Borislav Petkov wrote:
> > Hey,
> >
> > tglx says I have something for ya :-)
> >
> > ======================================================
> > WARNING: possible circular locking dependency detected
> > 4.13.0-rc6+ #1 Not tainted
> > ------------------------------------------------------
> > watchdog/3/27 is trying to acquire lock:
> > (cpu_hotplug_lock.rw_sem){++++}, at: [<ffffffff8100c489>] release_ds_buffers+0x29/0xd0
> >
> > but now in release context of a crosslock acquired at the following:
> > ((complete)&self->parked){+.+.}, at: [<ffffffff810895f6>] kthread_park+0x46/0x60
>
>
> So I'm thinking this one is an actual deadlock.
>
> So, as far as I can tell this ends up being:
>
> CPU0 CPU1
>
> (smpboot_regiser_percpu_thread_cpumask)
>
> get_online_cpus()
> __smpboot_create_thread()
> kthread_park();
> wait_for_completion(&X)
>
>
> (smpboot_thread_fn)
>
> ->park() := watchdog_disable()
> watchdog_nmi_disable()
> perf_event_release_kernel();
> put_event()
> _free_event()
> ->destroy() := hw_perf_event_destroy()
> x86_release_hardware()
> release_ds_buffers()
> get_online_cpus()
>
>
> kthread_parkme()
> complete(&X)
>
>
>
> So CPU0 holds cpus_hotplug_lock while wait_for_completion() and CPU1
> needs to acquire before complete().
>
> So if, in between, CPU2 does down_write(), things will get unstuck.
>
> What's worse, there's also:
>
> cpus_write_lock()
> ...
> takedown_cpu()
> smpboot_park_threads()
> smpboot_park_thread()
> kthread_park()
> ->park() := watchdog_disable()
> watchdog_nmi_disable()
> perf_event_release_kernel();
> put_event()
> _free_event()
> ->destroy() := hw_perf_event_destroy()
> x86_release_hardware()
> release_ds_buffers()
> get_online_cpus()
>
> which as far as I can tell, spells instant deadlock..

Aah, but that latter will never happen.. because each CPU will have a
&pmc_refcount and we can't unplug _all_ CPUs.

So the first one will only ever happen on boot, where we park() the very
first watchdog thread and is a potential deadlock, but won't happen
because nobody is around to do down_write() just yet.

argh!