Hi Ted, On 05/25/2011 12:42 AM, Ted Ts'o wrote:
On Wed, May 11, 2011 at 10:10:41AM +0300, Surbhi Palande wrote:While the fsstress background writes are busy dirtying the page cache, if a fsfreeze happens then the background writes should stall. A sync should then not have any data to sync to the FS. If it does have any data to sync then sync will cause a deadlock by holding the s_umount write semaphore and waiting in the wait queue for the FS to thaw, whereas the F.S can never thaw without getting the s_umount write semaphore. Signed-off-by: Surbhi Palande<surbhi.palande@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>Hi Surbhi, Have you tried out Jan Kara's patches? [1/3] fs: Create __block_page_mkwrite() helper passing error values back [2/3] vfs: Block mmapped writes while the fs is frozen [3/3] ext4: Rewrite ext4_page_mkwrite() to return locked page
Yes! We have tried these patches and we still see the same deadlock/hang. The following is the reason for it:
// lets assume the inode is clean and so are its pages. P1: process that tries mmap write t1) __do_fault() t2) ext4_page_mkwrite() t3) block_page_mkwrite() t4) vfs_check_frozen() // filesystem is not frozen so control falls through. t5) __block_page_mkwrite() t6) set_page_dirty() t7) __set_page_dirty() t8) radix_tree_tag_set(PAGECACHE_TAG_DIRTY) // page is dirtied, but inode is yet clean. ---------------------- Pre-empted----------------- P2: freeze process t9) freeze_super() t10) sync_filesystem() // page cache now clean! no inode is dirty. // however we have a dirty page belonging to a clean inode. ----------------------Freeze process finishes, filesystem frozen!---- P1: process that tries mmap write gets control. t11) __set_page_dirty() // gets control back t12) __mark_inode_dirty()v // inode is now dirty and it has a dirty page. // though in reality there is no write which has occured. t13) if (inode->i_sb->s_frozen != SB_UNFROZEN) // __block_page_mkwrite() gets control back t14) unlock_page() t15) __block_page_mkwrite() returns -EAGAIN t16) block_page_mkwrite() returns VM_FAULT_RETRY --------------------------- // now we see the original deadlock reported. P3: sync a filesystem t17) down_read(s_umount) t18) sync_filesystem() t19) sb->s_op->sync_fs() // =ext4_sync_fs() t20) vfs_check_frozen() // now blocks for thaw. // so thaw cannot happen because sync process sleeps with s_umount!This deadlock can occur whenever the freeze happens after the vfs_check_frozen() but before the __mark_inode_dirty().
We see blocked sync processes every time we do the following: 1) executing iozone on multipath and2) I modified the script that Toshiyuki sent, attaching it here. This script reproduces the bug faster when executed with iozone. (Note, that since this is a race, this script _may not_ always produce it on its own)
I also found one more missing piece in the "Add support to freeze and unfreeze journal": 1) Call jdb2_journal_thaw() from ext4_unfreeze() to restart the transactions.
I shall send a patch for the same as a reply to this email again. Thanks! Warm Regards, Surbhi. P3: sync
Do these patches fix the problem you've been trying to fix with your patches? I believe they should, but I would appreciate confirmation that with these patches, you're no longer able to reproduce the problem you've been concerned about. Thanks, regards, - Ted
Attachment:
test.sh
Description: Bourne shell script