Date: Mon, 31 Oct 2016 16:56:16 +0100
From: Sebastian Andrzej Siewior <bigeasy@linutronix.de>
To: Trond Myklebust <trondmy@primarydata.com>
Cc: Schumaker Anna <anna.schumaker@netapp.com>,
        List Linux NFS Mailing <linux-nfs@vger.kernel.org>,
        List Linux Kernel Mailing <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
        "tglx@linutronix.de" <tglx@linutronix.de>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v3] NFSv4: replace seqcount_t with a rw_semaphore
Message-ID: <20161031155616.fqbqy53bwpanufhn@linutronix.de>
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On 2016-10-31 15:30:02 [+0000], Trond Myklebust wrote:
> > On Oct 31, 2016, at 09:19, Sebastian Andrzej Siewior <bigeasy@linutronix.de> wrote:
> > The list_for_each_entry() in nfs4_reclaim_open_state:
> > It seems that this lock protects the ->so_states list among other
> > atomic_t & flags members. So at the begin of the loop we inc ->count
> > ensuring that this field is not removed while we use it. So we drop the
> > ->so_lock loc during the loop it seems. And after nfs4_reclaim_locks()
> > invocation we nfs4_put_open_state() and grab the ->so_lock again. So if
> > we were the last user of this struct and we remove it, then the
> > following list_next_entry() invocation is a use-after-free. Even if we
> > use list_for_each_entry_safe() there is no guarantee that the following
> > member is still valid because it might have been removed by someone
> > invoking nfs4_put_open_state() on it, right?
> > So there is this.
> > 
> > However to address my initial problem I have here a patch :) So it uses
> > a rw_semaphore which ensures that there is only one writer at a time or
> > multiple reader. So it should be basically what is happening now plus a
> > tiny tiny tiny lock plus lockdep coverage. I tried to this myself but I
> > don't manage to get into this code path at all so I might be doing
> > something wrong.
> > 
> > Could you please check if this patch is working for you and whether my
> > list_for_each_entry() observation is correct or not?
> > 
> > v2…v3: replace the seqlock with a RW semaphore.
> > 
> 
> NACK. That will deadlock. The reason why we use a seqlock there is precisely because we cannot allow ordinary RPC calls to lock out the recovery thread. 
Hmmm. So this is getting invoked if I reboot the server? A restart of
nfs-kernel-server is the same thing?
Is the list_for_each_entry() observation I made correct?

>If the server reboots, then ordinary RPC calls will fail until the recovery thread has had a chance to re-establish the state.

This means that the ordinary RPC call won't return and fail but wait
with the lock held until the recovery thread did its thing?

Sebastian