On Mon, 2011-06-06 at 15:16 -0700, Andrew Morton wrote:
> On Mon, 30 May 2011 11:37:38 +0200
> Jan Kara <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> > Under heavy memory and filesystem load, users observe the assertion
> > mapping->nrpages == 0 in end_writeback() trigger. This can be caused
> > by page reclaim reclaiming the last page from a mapping in the following
> > race:
> >     CPU0                            CPU1
> >   ...
> >   shrink_page_list()
> >     __remove_mapping()
> >       __delete_from_page_cache()
> >         radix_tree_delete()
> >                                     evict_inode()
> >                                       truncate_inode_pages()
> >                                         truncate_inode_pages_range()
> >                                           pagevec_lookup() - finds nothing
> >                                       end_writeback()
> >                                         mapping->nrpages != 0 -> BUG
> >         page->mapping = NULL
> >         mapping->nrpages--
> > 
> > Fix the problem by cycling the mapping->tree_lock at the end of
> > truncate_inode_pages_range() to synchronize with page reclaim.
> > 
> > Analyzed by Jay <[email protected]>, lost in LKML, and dug
> > out by Miklos Szeredi <[email protected]>.
> > 
> > CC: Jay <[email protected]>
> > CC: [email protected]
> > Acked-by: Miklos Szeredi <[email protected]>
> > Signed-off-by: Jan Kara <[email protected]>
> > ---
> >  mm/truncate.c |    7 +++++++
> >  1 files changed, 7 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
> > 
> >  Andrew, would you merge this patch please? Thanks.
> > 
> > diff --git a/mm/truncate.c b/mm/truncate.c
> > index a956675..ec3d292 100644
> > --- a/mm/truncate.c
> > +++ b/mm/truncate.c
> > @@ -291,6 +291,13 @@ void truncate_inode_pages_range(struct address_space 
> > *mapping,
> >             pagevec_release(&pvec);
> >             mem_cgroup_uncharge_end();
> >     }
> > +   /*
> > +    * Cycle the tree_lock to make sure all __delete_from_page_cache()
> > +    * calls run from page reclaim have finished as well (this handles the
> > +    * case when page reclaim took the last page from our range).
> > +    */
> > +   spin_lock_irq(&mapping->tree_lock);
> > +   spin_unlock_irq(&mapping->tree_lock);
> >  }
> >  EXPORT_SYMBOL(truncate_inode_pages_range);
> 
> That's one ugly patch.
> 
> 
> Perhaps this regression was added by Nick's RCUification of pagecache. 
> 
> Before that patch, mapping->nrpages and the radix-tree state were
> coherent for holders of tree_lock.  So pagevec_lookup() would never
> return "no pages" while ->nrpages is non-zero.
> 
> After that patch, find_get_pages() uses RCU to protect the radix-tree
> but I don't think it correctly protects the aggregate (radix-tree +
> nrpages).

Yes, that's the case.

> 
> 
> If it's not that then I see another possibility. 
> truncate_inode_pages_range() does
> 
>         if (mapping->nrpages == 0)
>                 return;
> 
> Is there anything to prevent a page getting added to the inode _after_
> this test?  i_mutex?  If not, that would trigger the BUG.

That BUG is in the inode eviction phase, so there's nothing that could
be adding a page.

And the only thing that could be removing one is page reclaim.

> Either way, I don't think that the uglypatch expresses a full
> understanding of te bug ;)

I don't see a better way, how would we make nrpages update atomically
wrt the radix-tree while using only RCU?

The question is, does it matter that those two can get temporarily out
of sync?

In case of inode eviction it does, not only because of that BUG_ON, but
because page reclaim must be somehow synchronised with eviction.
Otherwise it may access tree_lock on the mapping of an already freed
inode.

In other cases?  AFAICS it doesn't matter.  Most ->nrpages accesses
weren't under tree_lock before Nick's RCUification, so their use were
just optimization.   

Thanks,
Miklos


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