Re: [PATCH 1/2] vfs: free vfsmount through rcu work from kern_unmount

[Al Viro]

On Fri, Feb 18, 2022 at 08:24:09PM +0000, Al Viro wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 18, 2022 at 07:43:43PM +0000, Al Viro wrote:
> > On Fri, Feb 18, 2022 at 02:33:31PM -0500, Rik van Riel wrote:
> > > On Fri, 2022-02-18 at 19:26 +0000, Al Viro wrote:
> > > > On Fri, Feb 18, 2022 at 01:31:13PM -0500, Rik van Riel wrote:
> > > > > After kern_unmount returns, callers can no longer access the
> > > > > vfsmount structure. However, the vfsmount structure does need
> > > > > to be kept around until the end of the RCU grace period, to
> > > > > make sure other accesses have all gone away too.
> > > > > 
> > > > > This can be accomplished by either gating each kern_unmount
> > > > > on synchronize_rcu (the comment in the code says it all), or
> > > > > by deferring the freeing until the next grace period, where
> > > > > it needs to be handled in a workqueue due to the locking in
> > > > > mntput_no_expire().
> > > > 
> > > > NAK.  There's code that relies upon kern_unmount() being
> > > > synchronous.  That's precisely the reason why MNT_INTERNAL
> > > > is treated that way in mntput_no_expire().
> > > 
> > > Fair enough. Should I make a kern_unmount_rcu() version
> > > that gets called just from mq_put_mnt()?
> > 
> > Umm...  I'm not sure you can afford having struct ipc_namespace
> > freed and reused before the mqueue superblock gets at least to
> > deactivate_locked_super().
> 
> BTW, that's a good demonstration of the problems with making those
> beasts async.  struct mount is *not* accessed past kern_unmount(),
> but the objects used by the superblock might very well be - in
> this case they (struct ipc_namespace, pointed to by s->s_fs_data)
> are freed by the caller after kern_unmount() returns.  And possibly
> reused.  Now note that they are used as search keys by
> mqueue_get_tree() and it becomes very fishy.
> 
> If you want to go that way, make it something like
> 
> void put_ipc_ns(struct ipc_namespace *ns)
> {
>         if (refcount_dec_and_lock(&ns->ns.count, &mq_lock)) {
> 		mq_clear_sbinfo(ns);
> 		spin_unlock(&mq_lock);
> 		kern_unmount_rcu(ns->mq_mnt);
> 	}
> }
> 
> and give mqueue this for ->kill_sb():
> 
> static void mqueue_kill_super(struct super_block *sb)
> {
> 	struct ipc_namespace *ns = sb->s_fs_info;
> 	kill_litter_super(sb);
> 	do the rest of free_ipc_ns();
> }
> 
> One thing: kern_unmount_rcu() needs a very big warning about
> the caution needed from its callers.  It's really not safe
> for general use, and it will be a temptation for folks with
> scalability problems like this one to just use it instead of
> kern_unmount() and declare the problem solved.

FWIW, that won't work correctly wrt failure exits.  I'm digging
through the lifetime rules in there right now, will post when
I'm done.