3.2.73-rc1 review patch. If anyone has any objections, please let me know. ------------------ From: Kosuke Tatsukawa <tatsu@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> commit e81107d4c6bd098878af9796b24edc8d4a9524fd upstream. My colleague ran into a program stall on a x86_64 server, where n_tty_read() was waiting for data even if there was data in the buffer in the pty. kernel stack for the stuck process looks like below. #0 [ffff88303d107b58] __schedule at ffffffff815c4b20 #1 [ffff88303d107bd0] schedule at ffffffff815c513e #2 [ffff88303d107bf0] schedule_timeout at ffffffff815c7818 #3 [ffff88303d107ca0] wait_woken at ffffffff81096bd2 #4 [ffff88303d107ce0] n_tty_read at ffffffff8136fa23 #5 [ffff88303d107dd0] tty_read at ffffffff81368013 #6 [ffff88303d107e20] __vfs_read at ffffffff811a3704 #7 [ffff88303d107ec0] vfs_read at ffffffff811a3a57 #8 [ffff88303d107f00] sys_read at ffffffff811a4306 #9 [ffff88303d107f50] entry_SYSCALL_64_fastpath at ffffffff815c86d7 There seems to be two problems causing this issue. First, in drivers/tty/n_tty.c, __receive_buf() stores the data and updates ldata->commit_head using smp_store_release() and then checks the wait queue using waitqueue_active(). However, since there is no memory barrier, __receive_buf() could return without calling wake_up_interactive_poll(), and at the same time, n_tty_read() could start to wait in wait_woken() as in the following chart. __receive_buf() n_tty_read() ------------------------------------------------------------------------ if (waitqueue_active(&tty->read_wait)) /* Memory operations issued after the RELEASE may be completed before the RELEASE operation has completed */ add_wait_queue(&tty->read_wait, &wait); ... if (!input_available_p(tty, 0)) { smp_store_release(&ldata->commit_head, ldata->read_head); ... timeout = wait_woken(&wait, TASK_INTERRUPTIBLE, timeout); ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The second problem is that n_tty_read() also lacks a memory barrier call and could also cause __receive_buf() to return without calling wake_up_interactive_poll(), and n_tty_read() to wait in wait_woken() as in the chart below. __receive_buf() n_tty_read() ------------------------------------------------------------------------ spin_lock_irqsave(&q->lock, flags); /* from add_wait_queue() */ ... if (!input_available_p(tty, 0)) { /* Memory operations issued after the RELEASE may be completed before the RELEASE operation has completed */ smp_store_release(&ldata->commit_head, ldata->read_head); if (waitqueue_active(&tty->read_wait)) __add_wait_queue(q, wait); spin_unlock_irqrestore(&q->lock,flags); /* from add_wait_queue() */ ... timeout = wait_woken(&wait, TASK_INTERRUPTIBLE, timeout); ------------------------------------------------------------------------ There are also other places in drivers/tty/n_tty.c which have similar calls to waitqueue_active(), so instead of adding many memory barrier calls, this patch simply removes the call to waitqueue_active(), leaving just wake_up*() behind. This fixes both problems because, even though the memory access before or after the spinlocks in both wake_up*() and add_wait_queue() can sneak into the critical section, it cannot go past it and the critical section assures that they will be serialized (please see "INTER-CPU ACQUIRING BARRIER EFFECTS" in Documentation/memory-barriers.txt for a better explanation). Moreover, the resulting code is much simpler. Latency measurement using a ping-pong test over a pty doesn't show any visible performance drop. Signed-off-by: Kosuke Tatsukawa <tatsu@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> [bwh: Backported to 3.2: - Use wake_up_interruptible(), not wake_up_interruptible_poll() - There are only two spurious uses of waitqueue_active() to remove] Signed-off-by: Ben Hutchings <ben@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> --- --- a/drivers/tty/n_tty.c +++ b/drivers/tty/n_tty.c @@ -1298,8 +1298,7 @@ handle_newline: tty->canon_data++; spin_unlock_irqrestore(&tty->read_lock, flags); kill_fasync(&tty->fasync, SIGIO, POLL_IN); - if (waitqueue_active(&tty->read_wait)) - wake_up_interruptible(&tty->read_wait); + wake_up_interruptible(&tty->read_wait); return; } } @@ -1422,8 +1421,7 @@ static void n_tty_receive_buf(struct tty if ((!tty->icanon && (tty->read_cnt >= tty->minimum_to_wake)) || L_EXTPROC(tty)) { kill_fasync(&tty->fasync, SIGIO, POLL_IN); - if (waitqueue_active(&tty->read_wait)) - wake_up_interruptible(&tty->read_wait); + wake_up_interruptible(&tty->read_wait); } /* -- 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