[dm-devel] dm-snap deadlock in pending_complete()

[Mike Snitzer]

On Wed, Aug 12 2015 at  8:43pm -0400,
NeilBrown <neilb at suse.com> wrote:

> On Wed, 12 Aug 2015 12:25:42 -0400 (EDT) Mikulas Patocka
> <mpatocka at redhat.com> wrote:
> 
> > 
> > 
> > On Wed, 12 Aug 2015, NeilBrown wrote:
> > 
> > > On Tue, 11 Aug 2015 05:14:33 -0400 (EDT) Mikulas Patocka
> > > <mpatocka at redhat.com> wrote:
> > > 
> > > > Hi
> > > > 
> > > > On Mon, 10 Aug 2015, NeilBrown wrote:
> > > > 
> > > > > 
> > > > > Hi Mikulas,
> > > > >  I have a customer hitting the deadlock you described over a year ago
> > > > >  in:
> > > > > 
> > > > > Subject: [dm-devel] [PATCH] block: flush queued bios when the process
> > > > >          blocks
> > > > 
> > > > Ask block layer maintainers to accept that patch.
> > > 
> > > Unfortunately I don't really like the patch ... or the bioset rescue
> > > workqueues that it is based on.   Sorry.
> > > 
> > > So I might keep looking for a more localised approach....
> > 
> > The problem here is that other dm targets may deadlock in a similar way 
> > too - for example, dm-thin could deadlock on pmd->pool_lock.
> > 
> > The cause of the bug is bio queuing on current->bio_list. There is an 
> > assumption that if a dm target submits a bio to a lower-level target, the 
> > bio finishes in finite time. Queuing on current->bio_list breaks the 
> > assumption, bios can be held indefinitelly on current->bio_list.
> > 
> > The patch that flushes current->bio_list is the correct way to fix it - it 
> > makes sure that a bio can't be held indefinitely.
> > 
> > Another way to fix it would be to abandon current->bio_list --- but then, 
> > there would be problem with stack overflow on deeply nested targets.
> > 
> 
> I think it is a bit simplistic to say that current->bio_list is the
> "cause" of the problem.  It is certainly a part of the problem.  The
> assumption you mention is another part - and the two conflict.
> 
> As you say, we could abandon current->bio_list, but then we risk stack
> overflows again.
> Or we could hand the bio_list to a work-queue whenever the make_request
> function needs to schedule.... but then if handling one of those bios
> needs to schedule...  not sure, it might work.
> 
> Or we could change the assumption and never block in a make_request
> function after calling generic_make_request().  Maybe that is difficult.
> 
> Or we could change __split_and_process_bio to use bio_split() to split
> the bio, then handle the first and call generic_make_request on the
> second.  That would effectively put the second half on the end of
> bio_list so it wouldn't be tried until all requests derived from the
> first half have been handled.
> 
> None of these is completely straight forward, but I suspect all are
> possible.
> 
> I'm leaning towards the last one:  when you want to split a bio, use
> bio_split and handle the two halves separately.

Sounds worth pursuing.

> Do you have thoughts on that?

Once the late bio splitting work is merged for 4.3 I (along with Joe,
yourself, anyone interested) hope to review/audit/fix DM core to make
proper use of bio_split() et al.

So any work in this area needs to be based on the late-bio-splitting
patchset/branch that mlin has been pushing.