This is a note to let you know that I've just added the patch titled livelock avoidance in sget() to the 3.10-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: livelock-avoidance-in-sget.patch and it can be found in the queue-3.10 subdirectory. If you, or anyone else, feels it should not be added to the stable tree, please let <stable@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> know about it. >From acfec9a5a892f98461f52ed5770de99a3e571ae2 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Al Viro <viro@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Date: Sat, 20 Jul 2013 03:13:55 +0400 Subject: livelock avoidance in sget() From: Al Viro <viro@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> commit acfec9a5a892f98461f52ed5770de99a3e571ae2 upstream. Eric Sandeen has found a nasty livelock in sget() - take a mount(2) about to fail. The superblock is on ->fs_supers, ->s_umount is held exclusive, ->s_active is 1. Along comes two more processes, trying to mount the same thing; sget() in each is picking that superblock, bumping ->s_count and trying to grab ->s_umount. ->s_active is 3 now. Original mount(2) finally gets to deactivate_locked_super() on failure; ->s_active is 2, superblock is still ->fs_supers because shutdown will *not* happen until ->s_active hits 0. ->s_umount is dropped and now we have two processes chasing each other: s_active = 2, A acquired ->s_umount, B blocked A sees that the damn thing is stillborn, does deactivate_locked_super() s_active = 1, A drops ->s_umount, B gets it A restarts the search and finds the same superblock. And bumps it ->s_active. s_active = 2, B holds ->s_umount, A blocked on trying to get it ... and we are in the earlier situation with A and B switched places. The root cause, of course, is that ->s_active should not grow until we'd got MS_BORN. Then failing ->mount() will have deactivate_locked_super() shut the damn thing down. Fortunately, it's easy to do - the key point is that grab_super() is called only for superblocks currently on ->fs_supers, so it can bump ->s_count and grab ->s_umount first, then check MS_BORN and bump ->s_active; we must never increment ->s_count for superblocks past ->kill_sb(), but grab_super() is never called for those. The bug is pretty old; we would've caught it by now, if not for accidental exclusion between sget() for block filesystems; the things like cgroup or e.g. mtd-based filesystems don't have anything of that sort, so they get bitten. The right way to deal with that is obviously to fix sget()... Signed-off-by: Al Viro <viro@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> --- fs/super.c | 25 ++++++++++--------------- 1 file changed, 10 insertions(+), 15 deletions(-) --- a/fs/super.c +++ b/fs/super.c @@ -336,19 +336,19 @@ EXPORT_SYMBOL(deactivate_super); * and want to turn it into a full-blown active reference. grab_super() * is called with sb_lock held and drops it. Returns 1 in case of * success, 0 if we had failed (superblock contents was already dead or - * dying when grab_super() had been called). + * dying when grab_super() had been called). Note that this is only + * called for superblocks not in rundown mode (== ones still on ->fs_supers + * of their type), so increment of ->s_count is OK here. */ static int grab_super(struct super_block *s) __releases(sb_lock) { - if (atomic_inc_not_zero(&s->s_active)) { - spin_unlock(&sb_lock); - return 1; - } - /* it's going away */ s->s_count++; spin_unlock(&sb_lock); - /* wait for it to die */ down_write(&s->s_umount); + if ((s->s_flags & MS_BORN) && atomic_inc_not_zero(&s->s_active)) { + put_super(s); + return 1; + } up_write(&s->s_umount); put_super(s); return 0; @@ -463,11 +463,6 @@ retry: destroy_super(s); s = NULL; } - down_write(&old->s_umount); - if (unlikely(!(old->s_flags & MS_BORN))) { - deactivate_locked_super(old); - goto retry; - } return old; } } @@ -660,10 +655,10 @@ restart: if (hlist_unhashed(&sb->s_instances)) continue; if (sb->s_bdev == bdev) { - if (grab_super(sb)) /* drops sb_lock */ - return sb; - else + if (!grab_super(sb)) goto restart; + up_write(&sb->s_umount); + return sb; } } spin_unlock(&sb_lock); Patches currently in stable-queue which might be from viro@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx are queue-3.10/livelock-avoidance-in-sget.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