On Fri 04-05-18 07:35:34, Tetsuo Handa wrote: > Jan Kara wrote: > > Make wb_workfn() use wakeup_wb() for requeueing the work which takes all > > the necessary precautions against racing with bdi unregistration. > > Yes, this patch will solve NULL pointer dereference bug. But is it OK to > leave list_empty(&wb->work_list) == false situation? Who takes over the > role of making list_empty(&wb->work_list) == true? That's a good question. The reason is the last running instance of wb_workfn() cannot leave with the work_list non-empty. Once WB_registered is cleared we cannot add new entries to work_list. Then we'll queue and flush last wb_workfn() to clean up the list. The problem with NULL ptr deref has been triggered not by this last running wb_workfn() but by one running independently in parallel to wb_shutdown(). So something like: CPU0 CPU1 CPU2 wb_workfn() do { ... } while (!list_empty(&wb->work_list)); wb_queue_work() if (test_bit(WB_registered, &wb->state)) { list_add_tail(&work->list, &wb->work_list); mod_delayed_work(bdi_wq, &wb->dwork, 0); } wb_shutdown() if (!test_and_clear_bit(WB_registered, &wb->state)) { ... mod_delayed_work(bdi_wq, &wb->dwork, 0); flush_delayed_work(&wb->dwork); if (!list_empty(&wb->work_list)) mod_delayed_work(bdi_wq, &wb->dwork, 0); -> queues buggy work > Just a confirmation, for Fabiano Rosas is facing a problem that "write call > hangs in kernel space after virtio hot-remove" and is thinking that we might > need to go the opposite direction > ( http://lkml.kernel.org/r/f0787b79-1e50-5f55-a400-44f715451777@xxxxxxxxxxxxx ). Yes, I'm aware of that report and I think it should be solved differently than what Fabiano suggests. Honza -- Jan Kara <jack@xxxxxxxx> SUSE Labs, CR