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From:   Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Date:   Fri, 16 Dec 2022 20:31:54 -0600
Message-ID: <CAHk-=wj7FpAXZ0hnPKh-5CG-ZW8BmOhd4tEW+J7ryW26fkcDNA@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: Re: possible deadlock in __ata_sff_interrupt
To:     Boqun Feng <boqun.feng@gmail.com>, Waiman Long <longman@redhat.com>
Cc:     Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>,
        Damien Le Moal <damien.lemoal@opensource.wdc.com>,
        Wei Chen <harperchen1110@gmail.com>, linux-ide@vger.kernel.org,
        linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, syzkaller-bugs@googlegroups.com,
        syzbot <syzkaller@googlegroups.com>,
        linux-fsdevel <linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org>,
        Chuck Lever <chuck.lever@oracle.com>,
        Jeff Layton <jlayton@kernel.org>,
        Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
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Ok, let's bring in Waiman for the rwlock side.

On Fri, Dec 16, 2022 at 5:54 PM Boqun Feng <boqun.feng@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Right, for a reader not in_interrupt(), it may be blocked by a random
> waiting writer because of the fairness, even the lock is currently held
> by a reader:
>
>         CPU 1                   CPU 2           CPU 3
>         read_lock(&tasklist_lock); // get the lock
>
>                                                 write_lock_irq(&tasklist_lock); // wait for the lock
>
>                                 read_lock(&tasklist_lock); // cannot get the lock because of the fairness

But this should be ok - because CPU1 can make progress and eventually
release the lock.

So the tasklist_lock use is fine on its own - the reason interrupts
are special is because an interrupt on CPU 1 taking the lock for
reading would deadlock otherwise. As long as it happens on another
CPU, the original CPU should then be able to make progress.

But the problem here seems to be thst *another* lock is also involved
(in this case apparently "host->lock", and now if CPU1 and CPU2 get
these two locks in a different order, you can get an ABBA deadlock.

And apparently our lockdep machinery doesn't catch that issue, so it
doesn't get flagged.

I'm not sure what the lockdep rules for rwlocks are, but maybe lockdep
treats rwlocks as being _always_ unfair, not knowing about that "it's
only unfair when it's in interrupt context".

Maybe we need to always make rwlock unfair? Possibly only for tasklist_lock?

Oh, how I hate tasklist_lock. It's pretty much our one remaining "one
big lock". It's been a pain for a long long time.

            Linus