Re: [PATCH] locking/rwsem: Fix kernel crash when spinning on RWSEM_OWNER_UNKNOWN

From: Waiman Long
Date: Wed Jan 15 2020 - 09:27:25 EST


On 1/15/20 1:50 AM, Christoph Hellwig wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 14, 2020 at 02:03:03PM -0500, Waiman Long wrote:
>> The commit 91d2a812dfb9 ("locking/rwsem: Make handoff writer
>> optimistically spin on owner") will allow a recently woken up waiting
>> writer to spin on the owner. Unfortunately, if the owner happens to be
>> RWSEM_OWNER_UNKNOWN, the code will incorrectly spin on it leading to a
>> kernel crash. This is fixed by passing the proper non-spinnable bits
>> to rwsem_spin_on_owner() so that RWSEM_OWNER_UNKNOWN will be treated
>> as a non-spinnable target.
>>
>> Fixes: 91d2a812dfb9 ("locking/rwsem: Make handoff writer optimistically spin on owner")
>>
>> Reported-by: Christoph Hellwig <hch@xxxxxx>
>> Signed-off-by: Waiman Long <longman@xxxxxxxxxx>
> This survives all the tests that showed the problems with the original
> code:
>
> Tested-by: Christoph Hellwig <hch@xxxxxx>
>
>> if ((wstate == WRITER_HANDOFF) &&
>> - (rwsem_spin_on_owner(sem, 0) == OWNER_NULL))
>> + rwsem_spin_on_owner(sem, RWSEM_NONSPINNABLE) == OWNER_NULL)
> Nit: the inner braces in the first half of the conditional aren't required
> either.

I typically over-parenthesize the code to make it easier to read as we
don't need to think too much about operator precedence to see if it is
doing the right thing. I remove the 2nd parentheses to avoid breaking
the 80-colnum limit.

Cheers,
Longman