On 9/20/22 11:17, Alexander Atanasov wrote:
> Hello,
>
> On 20.09.22 11:42, Vlastimil Babka wrote:
>> On 9/20/22 10:20, Alexander Atanasov wrote:
>>> In (060807f841ac mm, slub: make remaining slub_debug related attributes
>>> read-only failslab) it was made RO.
>>
>> "read-only) failslab was made RO" ?
>
> Yep.
>
>>> I think it became a collateral victim to the other two options
>>> (sanity_checks and trace) for which the reasons are perfectly valid.
>>
>> The commit also mentioned that modifying the flags is not protected in any
>> way, see below.
>
> Yes, indeed.
>
>>> +static ssize_t failslab_store(struct kmem_cache *s, const char *buf,
>>> + size_t length)
>>> +{
>>> + if (s->refcount > 1)
>>> + return -EINVAL;
>>> +
>>> + s->flags &= ~SLAB_FAILSLAB;
>>> + if (buf[0] == '1')
>>> + s->flags |= SLAB_FAILSLAB;
>>
>> Could we at least use a temporary variable to set up the final value and
>> then do a WRITE_ONCE() to s->flags, so the compiler is not allowed to do
>> some funky stuff? Assuming this is really the only place where we modify
>> s->flags during runtime, so we can't miss other updates due to RMW.
>
> Since it is set or clear - instead of temporary variable and potentially two
> writes and RMW issues i would suggest this:
> + if (buf[0] == '1')
> + s->flags |= SLAB_FAILSLAB;
> + else
> + s->flags &= ~SLAB_FAILSLAB;
This way also has RMW issues, and also the compiler is allowed to
temporarily modify s->flags any way it likes; with WRITE_ONCE() it can't.
> If at some point more places need to modify the flags at runtime they can
> switch to atomic bit ops.
