Re: [bug] __blk_mq_run_hw_queue suspicious rcu usage

From: David Rientjes
Date: Wed Nov 27 2019 - 17:11:33 EST


On Wed, 18 Sep 2019, Christoph Hellwig wrote:

> On Tue, Sep 17, 2019 at 06:41:02PM +0000, Lendacky, Thomas wrote:
> > > diff --git a/drivers/nvme/host/pci.c b/drivers/nvme/host/pci.c
> > > --- a/drivers/nvme/host/pci.c
> > > +++ b/drivers/nvme/host/pci.c
> > > @@ -1613,7 +1613,8 @@ static int nvme_alloc_admin_tags(struct nvme_dev *dev)
> > > dev->admin_tagset.timeout = ADMIN_TIMEOUT;
> > > dev->admin_tagset.numa_node = dev_to_node(dev->dev);
> > > dev->admin_tagset.cmd_size = sizeof(struct nvme_iod);
> > > - dev->admin_tagset.flags = BLK_MQ_F_NO_SCHED;
> > > + dev->admin_tagset.flags = BLK_MQ_F_NO_SCHED |
> > > + BLK_MQ_F_BLOCKING;
> >
> > I think you want to only set the BLK_MQ_F_BLOCKING if the DMA is required
> > to be unencrypted. Unfortunately, force_dma_unencrypted() can't be called
> > from a module. Is there a DMA API that could be called to get that info?
>
> The DMA API must support non-blocking calls, and various drivers rely
> on that. So we need to provide that even for the SEV case. If the
> actual blocking can't be made to work we'll need to wire up the DMA
> pool in kernel/dma/remap.c for it (and probably move it to separate
> file).
>

Resurrecting this thread from a couple months ago because it appears that
this is still an issue with 5.4 guests.

dma_pool_alloc(), regardless of whether mem_flags allows blocking or not,
can always sleep if the device's DMA must be unencrypted and
mem_encrypt_active() == true. We know this because vm_unmap_aliases() can
always block.

NVMe's setup of PRPs and SGLs uses dma_pool_alloc(GFP_ATOMIC) but when
this is a SEV-enabled guest this allocation may block due to the
possibility of allocating DMA coherent memory through dma_direct_alloc().

It seems like one solution would be to add significant latency by doing
BLK_MQ_F_BLOCKING if force_dma_unencrypted() is true for the device but
this comes with significant downsides.

So we're left with making dma_pool_alloc(GFP_ATOMIC) actually be atomic
even when the DMA needs to be unencrypted for SEV. Christoph's suggestion
was to wire up dmapool in kernel/dma/remap.c for this. Is that necessary
to be done for all devices that need to do dma_pool_alloc(GFP_ATOMIC) or
can we do it within the DMA API itself so it's transparent to the driver?

Thomas/Brijesh: separately, it seems the use of set_memory_encrypted() or
set_memory_decrypted() must be possible without blocking; is this only an
issue from the DMA API point of view or can it be done elsewhere?