Revision 8c0bec2151a47906bf779c6715a10ce04453ab77 authored by Jiaying Zhang on 31 August 2011, 15:50:51 UTC, committed by Theodore Ts'o on 31 August 2011, 15:50:51 UTC
The i_mutex lock and flush_completed_IO() added by commit 2581fdc810
in ext4_evict_inode() causes lockdep complaining about potential
deadlock in several places.  In most/all of these LOCKDEP complaints
it looks like it's a false positive, since many of the potential
circular locking cases can't take place by the time the
ext4_evict_inode() is called; but since at the very least it may mask
real problems, we need to address this.

This change removes the flush_completed_IO() and i_mutex lock in
ext4_evict_inode().  Instead, we take a different approach to resolve
the software lockup that commit 2581fdc810 intends to fix.  Rather
than having ext4-dio-unwritten thread wait for grabing the i_mutex
lock of an inode, we use mutex_trylock() instead, and simply requeue
the work item if we fail to grab the inode's i_mutex lock.

This should speed up work queue processing in general and also
prevents the following deadlock scenario: During page fault,
shrink_icache_memory is called that in turn evicts another inode B.
Inode B has some pending io_end work so it calls ext4_ioend_wait()
that waits for inode B's i_ioend_count to become zero.  However, inode
B's ioend work was queued behind some of inode A's ioend work on the
same cpu's ext4-dio-unwritten workqueue.  As the ext4-dio-unwritten
thread on that cpu is processing inode A's ioend work, it tries to
grab inode A's i_mutex lock.  Since the i_mutex lock of inode A is
still hold before the page fault happened, we enter a deadlock.

Signed-off-by: Jiaying Zhang <jiayingz@google.com>
Signed-off-by: "Theodore Ts'o" <tytso@mit.edu>
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REPORTING-BUGS
[Some of this is taken from Frohwalt Egerer's original linux-kernel FAQ]

     What follows is a suggested procedure for reporting Linux bugs. You
aren't obliged to use the bug reporting format, it is provided as a guide
to the kind of information that can be useful to developers - no more.

     If the failure includes an "OOPS:" type message in your log or on
screen please read "Documentation/oops-tracing.txt" before posting your
bug report. This explains what you should do with the "Oops" information
to make it useful to the recipient.

      Send the output to the maintainer of the kernel area that seems to
be involved with the problem, and cc the relevant mailing list. Don't
worry too much about getting the wrong person. If you are unsure send it
to the person responsible for the code relevant to what you were doing.
If it occurs repeatably try and describe how to recreate it. That is
worth even more than the oops itself.  The list of maintainers and
mailing lists is in the MAINTAINERS file in this directory.  If you
know the file name that causes the problem you can use the following
command in this directory to find some of the maintainers of that file:
     perl scripts/get_maintainer.pl -f <filename>

      If it is a security bug, please copy the Security Contact listed
in the MAINTAINERS file.  They can help coordinate bugfix and disclosure.
See Documentation/SecurityBugs for more information.

      If you are totally stumped as to whom to send the report, send it to
linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org. (For more information on the linux-kernel
mailing list see http://www.tux.org/lkml/).

This is a suggested format for a bug report sent to the Linux kernel mailing
list. Having a standardized bug report form makes it easier for you not to
overlook things, and easier for the developers to find the pieces of
information they're really interested in. Don't feel you have to follow it.

      First run the ver_linux script included as scripts/ver_linux, which
reports the version of some important subsystems.  Run this script with
the command "sh scripts/ver_linux".

Use that information to fill in all fields of the bug report form, and
post it to the mailing list with a subject of "PROBLEM: <one line
summary from [1.]>" for easy identification by the developers.

[1.] One line summary of the problem:
[2.] Full description of the problem/report:
[3.] Keywords (i.e., modules, networking, kernel):
[4.] Kernel information
[4.1.] Kernel version (from /proc/version):
[4.2.] Kernel .config file:
[5.] Most recent kernel version which did not have the bug:
[6.] Output of Oops.. message (if applicable) with symbolic information
     resolved (see Documentation/oops-tracing.txt)
[7.] A small shell script or example program which triggers the
     problem (if possible)
[8.] Environment
[8.1.] Software (add the output of the ver_linux script here)
[8.2.] Processor information (from /proc/cpuinfo):
[8.3.] Module information (from /proc/modules):
[8.4.] Loaded driver and hardware information (/proc/ioports, /proc/iomem)
[8.5.] PCI information ('lspci -vvv' as root)
[8.6.] SCSI information (from /proc/scsi/scsi)
[8.7.] Other information that might be relevant to the problem
       (please look in /proc and include all information that you
       think to be relevant):
[X.] Other notes, patches, fixes, workarounds:


Thank you
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