The patch titled mm owner: fix race between swap and exit has been added to the -mm tree. Its filename is mm-owner-fix-race-between-swap-and-exit.patch Before you just go and hit "reply", please: a) Consider who else should be cc'ed b) Prefer to cc a suitable mailing list as well c) Ideally: find the original patch on the mailing list and do a reply-to-all to that, adding suitable additional cc's *** Remember to use Documentation/SubmitChecklist when testing your code *** See http://www.zip.com.au/~akpm/linux/patches/stuff/added-to-mm.txt to find out what to do about this The current -mm tree may be found at http://userweb.kernel.org/~akpm/mmotm/ ------------------------------------------------------ Subject: mm owner: fix race between swap and exit From: Balbir Singh <balbir@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> There's a race between mm->owner assignment and try_to_unuse(). The condition occurs when try_to_unuse() runs in parallel with an exiting task. The race can be visualized below. To quote Hugh "I don't think your careful alternation of CPU0/1 events at the end matters: the swapoff CPU simply dereferences mm->owner after that task has gone" But the alteration does help understand the race better (at-least for me :)) CPU0 CPU1 try_to_unuse task 1 stars exiting look at mm = task1->mm .. increment mm_users task 1 exits mm->owner needs to be updated, but no new owner is found (mm_users > 1, but no other task has task->mm = task1->mm) mm_update_next_owner() leaves grace period user count drops, call mmput(mm) task 1 freed dereferencing mm->owner fails The fix is to notify the subsystem (via mm_owner_changed callback), if no new owner is found by specifying the new task as NULL. Signed-off-by: Balbir Singh <balbir@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Reported-by: Hugh Dickins <hugh@xxxxxxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> --- kernel/cgroup.c | 5 +++-- kernel/exit.c | 10 ++++++++++ 2 files changed, 13 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) diff -puN kernel/cgroup.c~mm-owner-fix-race-between-swap-and-exit kernel/cgroup.c --- a/kernel/cgroup.c~mm-owner-fix-race-between-swap-and-exit +++ a/kernel/cgroup.c @@ -2743,14 +2743,15 @@ void cgroup_fork_callbacks(struct task_s */ void cgroup_mm_owner_callbacks(struct task_struct *old, struct task_struct *new) { - struct cgroup *oldcgrp, *newcgrp; + struct cgroup *oldcgrp, *newcgrp = NULL; if (need_mm_owner_callback) { int i; for (i = 0; i < CGROUP_SUBSYS_COUNT; i++) { struct cgroup_subsys *ss = subsys[i]; oldcgrp = task_cgroup(old, ss->subsys_id); - newcgrp = task_cgroup(new, ss->subsys_id); + if (new) + newcgrp = task_cgroup(new, ss->subsys_id); if (oldcgrp == newcgrp) continue; if (ss->mm_owner_changed) diff -puN kernel/exit.c~mm-owner-fix-race-between-swap-and-exit kernel/exit.c --- a/kernel/exit.c~mm-owner-fix-race-between-swap-and-exit +++ a/kernel/exit.c @@ -630,6 +630,16 @@ retry: } while_each_thread(g, c); read_unlock(&tasklist_lock); + /* + * We found no owner and mm_users > 1, this implies that + * we are most likely racing with swap (try_to_unuse()) + * Mark owner as NULL, so that subsystems can understand + * the callback and take action + */ + down_write(&mm->mmap_sem); + mm->owner = NULL; + cgroup_mm_owner_callbacks(mm->owner, NULL); + up_write(&mm->mmap_sem); return; assign_new_owner: _ Patches currently in -mm which might be from balbir@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx are memcg-fix-oops-in-mem_cgroup_shrink_usage.patch linux-next.patch memrlimit-add-memrlimit-controller-documentation.patch memrlimit-setup-the-memrlimit-controller.patch memrlimit-cgroup-mm-owner-callback-changes-to-add-task-info.patch memrlimit-add-memrlimit-controller-accounting-and-control.patch memrlimit-add-memrlimit-controller-accounting-and-control-memory-rlimit-fix-crash-on-fork.patch memrlimit-improve-error-handling.patch memrlimit-improve-error-handling-update.patch memrlimit-handle-attach_task-failure-add-can_attach-callback.patch mm-owner-fix-race-between-swap-and-exit.patch memory-rlimit-enhance-mm_owner_changed-callback-to-deal-with-exited-owner.patch gcov-architecture-specific-compile-flag-adjustments-x86_64-fix.patch -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe mm-commits" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html