• NeilBrown's avatar
    SUNRPC: defer slow parts of rpc_free_client() to a workqueue. · 7c4310ff
    NeilBrown authored
    The rpciod workqueue is on the write-out path for freeing dirty memory,
    so it is important that it never block waiting for memory to be
    allocated - this can lead to a deadlock.
    
    rpc_execute() - which is often called by an rpciod work item - calls
    rcp_task_release_client() which can lead to rpc_free_client().
    
    rpc_free_client() makes two calls which could potentially block wating
    for memory allocation.
    
    rpc_clnt_debugfs_unregister() calls into debugfs and will block while
    any of the debugfs files are being accessed.  In particular it can block
    while any of the 'open' methods are being called and all of these use
    malloc for one thing or another.  So this can deadlock if the memory
    allocation waits for NFS to complete some writes via rpciod.
    
    rpc_clnt_remove_pipedir() can take the inode_lock() and while it isn't
    obvious that memory allocations can happen while the lock it held, it is
    safer to assume they might and to not let rpciod call
    rpc_clnt_remove_pipedir().
    
    So this patch moves these two calls (together with the final kfree() and
    rpciod_down()) into a work-item to be run from the system work-queue.
    rpciod can continue its important work, and the final stages of the free
    can happen whenever they happen.
    
    I have seen this deadlock on a 4.12 based kernel where debugfs used
    synchronize_srcu() when removing objects.  synchronize_srcu() requires a
    workqueue and there were no free workther threads and none could be
    allocated.  While debugsfs no longer uses SRCU, I believe the deadlock
    is still possible.
    Signed-off-by: default avatarNeilBrown <neilb@suse.de>
    Signed-off-by: default avatarTrond Myklebust <trond.myklebust@hammerspace.com>
    7c4310ff
clnt.c 73 KB