[PATCH] devfs deadlock fix
From: Andrey Borzenkov <arvidjaar@mail.ru> I finally hit a painfully trivial way to reproduce another long standing devfs problem - deadlock between devfs_lookup and devfs_d_revalidate_wait. When devfs_lookup releases directory i_sem devfs_d_revalidate_wait grabs it (it happens not for every path) and goes to wait to be waked up. Unfortunately, devfs_lookup attempts to acquire directory i_sem before ever waking it up ... To reproduce (2.5.74 UP or SMP - does not matter, single CPU system) ls /dev/foo & rm -f /dev/foo & or possibly in a loop but then it easily fills up process table. In my case it hangs 100% reliably - on 2.5 OR 2.4. The current fix is to move re-acquire of i_sem after all devfs_d_revalidate_wait waiters have been waked up. Much better fix would be to ensure that ->d_revalidate either is always called under i_sem or always without. But that means the very heart of VFS and I do not dare to touch it. The fix has been tested on 2.4 (and is part of unofficial Mandrake Club kernel); I expected the same bug is in 2.5; I just was stupid not seeing the way to reproduce it before.
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