Thanks Pavan!! On 10/16/2023 4:03 PM, Pavan Kondeti wrote: >> Fix this issue by the below steps: >> a) Clear SECTION_HAS_MEM_MAP before freeing the ->usage. >> b) RCU protected read side critical section will either return NULL when >> SECTION_HAS_MEM_MAP is cleared or can successfully access ->usage. >> c) Synchronize the rcu on the write side and free the ->usage. No >> attempt will be made to access ->usage after this as the >> SECTION_HAS_MEM_MAP is cleared thus valid_section() return false. >> >> Since the section_deactivate() is a rare operation and will come in the >> hot remove path, impact of synchronize_rcu() should be negligble. > struct mem_section_usage has other field like pageblock_flags. Do we > need to protect its readers with RCU? Also can we annotate usage field > in struct mem_section with __rcu and use RCU accessors like > rcu_dereference() while using memsection::usage field? Good question about the pageblock_flags!! I think we rely on the get_pageblock_bitmap() to read the ms->usage->pageblock_flags by passing struct page*. 1) All the functions that I have come across calling get_pageblock_bitmap()/get_pfnblock_flags_mask() passing the page* which it get from buddy. I think we are safe here as the device pages(from which the problem is coming will never be onlined/added to buddy) 2) There are functions in compaction which directly operate on the pfn's through pfn_to_online_page(). As for device pages, it is going to return NULL, I think we are safe here too. 3) alloc_contig_range() which also operate on the pfn's directly, and TMK, we will not pass the [start , end) values of this function to contains the hole/offlined pages. I think we are safe here too. May be David/other reviewers can help in commenting if there are some mistakes above. I am currently working on to use the __rcu accessors. > >> /* >> + * Mark the section invalid so that valid_section() >> + * return false. This prevents code from dereferencing >> + * ms->usage array. >> + */ >> + ms->section_mem_map &= ~SECTION_HAS_MEM_MAP; >> + > This trick may not be needed if we add proper NULL checks around ms->usage. We are anyway > introducing a new rule this check needs to be done under RCU lock, so why not revisit it? > I think this is for valid_section(). >> * was allocated during boot. >> */ >> if (!PageReserved(virt_to_page(ms->usage))) { >> + synchronize_rcu(); >> kfree(ms->usage); >> ms->usage = NULL; >> } > If we add NULL checks around ms->usage, this becomes > > tmp = rcu_replace_pointer(ms->usage, NULL, hotplug_locked()); > syncrhonize_rcu(); > kfree(tmp); Per David input, I am working on using kfree_rcu(). Thanks, Charan