This is a note to let you know that I've just added the patch titled random: fix locking dependency with the tasklist_lock to the 3.8-stable tree which can be found at: http://www.kernel.org/git/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/stable-queue.git;a=summary The filename of the patch is: random-fix-locking-dependency-with-the-tasklist_lock.patch and it can be found in the queue-3.8 subdirectory. If you, or anyone else, feels it should not be added to the stable tree, please let <stable@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> know about it. >From b980955236922ae6106774511c5c05003d3ad225 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Theodore Ts'o <tytso@xxxxxxx> Date: Mon, 4 Mar 2013 11:59:12 -0500 Subject: random: fix locking dependency with the tasklist_lock From: Theodore Ts'o <tytso@xxxxxxx> commit b980955236922ae6106774511c5c05003d3ad225 upstream. Commit 6133705494bb introduced a circular lock dependency because posix_cpu_timers_exit() is called by release_task(), which is holding a writer lock on tasklist_lock, and this can cause a deadlock since kill_fasync() gets called with nonblocking_pool.lock taken. There's no reason why kill_fasync() needs to be taken while the random pool is locked, so move it out to fix this locking dependency. Signed-off-by: "Theodore Ts'o" <tytso@xxxxxxx> Reported-by: Russ Dill <Russ.Dill@xxxxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> --- drivers/char/random.c | 12 ++++++++---- 1 file changed, 8 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-) --- a/drivers/char/random.c +++ b/drivers/char/random.c @@ -852,6 +852,7 @@ static size_t account(struct entropy_sto int reserved) { unsigned long flags; + int wakeup_write = 0; /* Hold lock while accounting */ spin_lock_irqsave(&r->lock, flags); @@ -873,10 +874,8 @@ static size_t account(struct entropy_sto else r->entropy_count = reserved; - if (r->entropy_count < random_write_wakeup_thresh) { - wake_up_interruptible(&random_write_wait); - kill_fasync(&fasync, SIGIO, POLL_OUT); - } + if (r->entropy_count < random_write_wakeup_thresh) + wakeup_write = 1; } DEBUG_ENT("debiting %zu entropy credits from %s%s\n", @@ -884,6 +883,11 @@ static size_t account(struct entropy_sto spin_unlock_irqrestore(&r->lock, flags); + if (wakeup_write) { + wake_up_interruptible(&random_write_wait); + kill_fasync(&fasync, SIGIO, POLL_OUT); + } + return nbytes; } Patches currently in stable-queue which might be from tytso@xxxxxxx are queue-3.8/random-fix-locking-dependency-with-the-tasklist_lock.patch queue-3.8/ext4-convert-number-of-blocks-to-clusters-properly.patch -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe stable" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html