The patch titled mm: fix pdflush thread creation upper bound has been added to the -mm tree. Its filename is mm-fix-pdflush-thread-creation-upper-bound.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://userweb.kernel.org/~akpm/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: fix pdflush thread creation upper bound From: Peter W Morreale <pmorreale@xxxxxxxxxx> Fix a race on creating pdflush threads. Without the patch, it is possible to create more than MAX_PDFLUSH_THREADS threads, and this has been observed in practice on IO loaded SMP machines. The fix involves moving the lock around to protect the check against the thread count and correctly dealing with thread creation failure. This fix also _mostly_ repairs a race condition on how quickly the threads are created. The original intent was to create a pdflush thread (up to the max allowed) every second. Without this patch is is possible to create NCPUS pdflush threads concurrently. The 'mostly' caveat is because an assumption is made that thread creation will be successful. If we fail to create the thread, the miss is not considered fatal. (we will try again in 1 second) Signed-off-by: Peter W Morreale <pmorreale@xxxxxxxxxx> Reviewed-by: Rik van Riel <riel@xxxxxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> --- mm/pdflush.c | 30 ++++++++++++++++++++++++------ 1 file changed, 24 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-) diff -puN mm/pdflush.c~mm-fix-pdflush-thread-creation-upper-bound mm/pdflush.c --- a/mm/pdflush.c~mm-fix-pdflush-thread-creation-upper-bound +++ a/mm/pdflush.c @@ -98,7 +98,6 @@ static int __pdflush(struct pdflush_work INIT_LIST_HEAD(&my_work->list); spin_lock_irq(&pdflush_lock); - nr_pdflush_threads++; for ( ; ; ) { struct pdflush_work *pdf; @@ -126,20 +125,26 @@ static int __pdflush(struct pdflush_work (*my_work->fn)(my_work->arg0); + spin_lock_irq(&pdflush_lock); + /* * Thread creation: For how long have there been zero * available threads? + * + * To throttle creation, we reset last_empty_jifs. */ if (time_after(jiffies, last_empty_jifs + 1 * HZ)) { - /* unlocked list_empty() test is OK here */ if (list_empty(&pdflush_list)) { - /* unlocked test is OK here */ - if (nr_pdflush_threads < MAX_PDFLUSH_THREADS) + if (nr_pdflush_threads < MAX_PDFLUSH_THREADS) { + last_empty_jifs = jiffies; + nr_pdflush_threads++; + spin_unlock_irq(&pdflush_lock); start_one_pdflush_thread(); + spin_lock_irq(&pdflush_lock); + } } } - spin_lock_irq(&pdflush_lock); my_work->fn = NULL; /* @@ -236,13 +241,26 @@ int pdflush_operation(void (*fn)(unsigne static void start_one_pdflush_thread(void) { - kthread_run(pdflush, NULL, "pdflush"); + struct task_struct *k; + + k = kthread_run(pdflush, NULL, "pdflush"); + if (unlikely(IS_ERR(k))) { + spin_lock_irq(&pdflush_lock); + nr_pdflush_threads--; + spin_unlock_irq(&pdflush_lock); + } } static int __init pdflush_init(void) { int i; + /* + * Pre-set nr_pdflush_threads... If we fail to create, + * the count will be decremented. + */ + nr_pdflush_threads = MIN_PDFLUSH_THREADS; + for (i = 0; i < MIN_PDFLUSH_THREADS; i++) start_one_pdflush_thread(); return 0; _ Patches currently in -mm which might be from pmorreale@xxxxxxxxxx are mm-fix-pdflush-thread-creation-upper-bound.patch mm-add-proc-controls-for-pdflush-threads.patch mm-add-proc-controls-for-pdflush-threads-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