@Andrew, Only patch #5 changed (see change notes below). Thanks! Reading through the code and studying how mem_hotplug_lock is to be used, I noticed that there are two places where we can end up calling device_online()/device_offline() - online_pages()/offline_pages() without the mem_hotplug_lock. And there are other places where we call device_online()/device_offline() without the device_hotplug_lock. While e.g. echo "online" > /sys/devices/system/memory/memory9/state is fine, e.g. echo 1 > /sys/devices/system/memory/memory9/online Will not take the mem_hotplug_lock. However the device_lock() and device_hotplug_lock. E.g. via memory_probe_store(), we can end up calling add_memory()->online_pages() without the device_hotplug_lock. So we can have concurrent callers in online_pages(). We e.g. touch in online_pages() basically unprotected zone->present_pages then. Looks like there is a longer history to that (see Patch #2 for details), and fixing it to work the way it was intended is not really possible. We would e.g. have to take the mem_hotplug_lock in device/base/core.c, which sounds wrong. Summary: We had a lock inversion on mem_hotplug_lock and device_lock(). More details can be found in patch 3 and patch 6. I propose the general rules (documentation added in patch 6): 1. add_memory/add_memory_resource() must only be called with device_hotplug_lock. 2. remove_memory() must only be called with device_hotplug_lock. This is already documented and holds for all callers. 3. device_online()/device_offline() must only be called with device_hotplug_lock. This is already documented and true for now in core code. Other callers (related to memory hotplug) have to be fixed up. 4. mem_hotplug_lock is taken inside of add_memory/remove_memory/ online_pages/offline_pages. To me, this looks way cleaner than what we have right now (and easier to verify). And looking at the documentation of remove_memory, using lock_device_hotplug also for add_memory() feels natural. v2 -> v3: - Take device_hotplug_lock outside of loop in patch #5 - Added Ack to patch #5 v1 -> v2: - Upstream changes in powerpc/powernv code required modifications to patch #1, #4 and #5. - Minor patch description changes. - Added more locking details in patch #6. - Added rb's RFCv2 -> v1: - Dropped an unnecessary _ref from remove_memory() in patch #1 - Minor patch description fixes. - Added rb's RFC -> RFCv2: - Don't export device_hotplug_lock, provide proper remove_memory/add_memory wrappers. - Split up the patches a bit. - Try to improve powernv memtrace locking - Add some documentation for locking that matches my knowledg David Hildenbrand (6): mm/memory_hotplug: make remove_memory() take the device_hotplug_lock mm/memory_hotplug: make add_memory() take the device_hotplug_lock mm/memory_hotplug: fix online/offline_pages called w.o. mem_hotplug_lock powerpc/powernv: hold device_hotplug_lock when calling device_online() powerpc/powernv: hold device_hotplug_lock when calling memtrace_offline_pages() memory-hotplug.txt: Add some details about locking internals Documentation/memory-hotplug.txt | 42 ++++++++++++- arch/powerpc/platforms/powernv/memtrace.c | 8 ++- .../platforms/pseries/hotplug-memory.c | 8 +-- drivers/acpi/acpi_memhotplug.c | 4 +- drivers/base/memory.c | 22 +++---- drivers/xen/balloon.c | 3 + include/linux/memory_hotplug.h | 4 +- mm/memory_hotplug.c | 59 +++++++++++++++---- 8 files changed, 114 insertions(+), 36 deletions(-) -- 2.17.1