[dm-devel] [PATCH 2/2] dm-snapshot: Reimplement the cow limit.

[Mike Snitzer]

On Fri, Oct 11 2019 at  8:43am -0400,
Nikos Tsironis <ntsironis at arrikto.com> wrote:

> On 10/2/19 1:15 PM, Mikulas Patocka wrote:
> > Commit 721b1d98fb517a ("dm snapshot: Fix excessive memory usage and
> > workqueue stalls") introduced a semaphore to limit the maximum number of
> > in-flight kcopyd (COW) jobs.
> > 
> > The implementation of this throttling mechanism is prone to a deadlock:
> > 
> > 1. One or more threads write to the origin device causing COW, which is
> >    performed by kcopyd.
> > 
> > 2. At some point some of these threads might reach the s->cow_count
> >    semaphore limit and block in down(&s->cow_count), holding a read lock
> >    on _origins_lock.
> > 
> > 3. Someone tries to acquire a write lock on _origins_lock, e.g.,
> >    snapshot_ctr(), which blocks because the threads at step (2) already
> >    hold a read lock on it.
> > 
> > 4. A COW operation completes and kcopyd runs dm-snapshot's completion
> >    callback, which ends up calling pending_complete().
> >    pending_complete() tries to resubmit any deferred origin bios. This
> >    requires acquiring a read lock on _origins_lock, which blocks.
> > 
> >    This happens because the read-write semaphore implementation gives
> >    priority to writers, meaning that as soon as a writer tries to enter
> >    the critical section, no readers will be allowed in, until all
> >    writers have completed their work.
> > 
> >    So, pending_complete() waits for the writer at step (3) to acquire
> >    and release the lock. This writer waits for the readers at step (2)
> >    to release the read lock and those readers wait for
> >    pending_complete() (the kcopyd thread) to signal the s->cow_count
> >    semaphore: DEADLOCK.
> > 
> > In order to fix the bug, I reworked limiting, so that it waits without 
> > holding any locks. The patch adds a variable in_progress that counts how 
> > many kcopyd jobs are running. A function wait_for_in_progress will sleep 
> > if the variable in_progress is over the limit. It drops _origins_lock in 
> > order to avoid the deadlock.
> > 
> > Signed-off-by: Mikulas Patocka <mpatocka at redhat.com>
> > Cc: stable at vger.kernel.org	# v5.0+
> > Fixes: 721b1d98fb51 ("dm snapshot: Fix excessive memory usage and workqueue stalls")
> > 
> > ---
> >  drivers/md/dm-snap.c |   69 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++-----------
> >  1 file changed, 55 insertions(+), 14 deletions(-)
> > 
> > Index: linux-2.6/drivers/md/dm-snap.c
> > ===================================================================
> > --- linux-2.6.orig/drivers/md/dm-snap.c	2019-10-01 15:23:42.000000000 +0200
> > +++ linux-2.6/drivers/md/dm-snap.c	2019-10-02 12:01:23.000000000 +0200
> > @@ -18,7 +18,6 @@
> >  #include <linux/vmalloc.h>
> >  #include <linux/log2.h>
> >  #include <linux/dm-kcopyd.h>
> > -#include <linux/semaphore.h>
> >  
> >  #include "dm.h"
> >  
> > @@ -107,8 +106,8 @@ struct dm_snapshot {
> >  	/* The on disk metadata handler */
> >  	struct dm_exception_store *store;
> >  
> > -	/* Maximum number of in-flight COW jobs. */
> > -	struct semaphore cow_count;
> > +	unsigned in_progress;
> > +	struct wait_queue_head in_progress_wait;
> >  
> >  	struct dm_kcopyd_client *kcopyd_client;
> >  
> > @@ -162,8 +161,8 @@ struct dm_snapshot {
> >   */
> >  #define DEFAULT_COW_THRESHOLD 2048
> >  
> > -static int cow_threshold = DEFAULT_COW_THRESHOLD;
> > -module_param_named(snapshot_cow_threshold, cow_threshold, int, 0644);
> > +static unsigned cow_threshold = DEFAULT_COW_THRESHOLD;
> > +module_param_named(snapshot_cow_threshold, cow_threshold, uint, 0644);
> >  MODULE_PARM_DESC(snapshot_cow_threshold, "Maximum number of chunks being copied on write");
> >  
> >  DECLARE_DM_KCOPYD_THROTTLE_WITH_MODULE_PARM(snapshot_copy_throttle,
> > @@ -1327,7 +1326,7 @@ static int snapshot_ctr(struct dm_target
> >  		goto bad_hash_tables;
> >  	}
> >  
> > -	sema_init(&s->cow_count, (cow_threshold > 0) ? cow_threshold : INT_MAX);
> > +	init_waitqueue_head(&s->in_progress_wait);
> >  
> 
> 's->in_progress = 0' is missing here.
> 
> I totally missed that during the review and d3775354 ("dm: Use kzalloc
> for all structs with embedded biosets/mempools") changed the allocation
> of 's' to using kzalloc(), so 'in_progress' was implicitly initialized
> to zero and the tests ran fine.

OK, so the need to explicitly initialize to zero only exists in older
kernel (e.g. the 4.4-stable kernel).  Either that or cherry-pick commit
d3775354 (even if only the hunk that modifies dm-snap.c)

Mike