4.4-stable review patch. If anyone has any objections, please let me know. ------------------ From: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@xxxxxxx> [ Upstream commit 8655d5497735b288f8a9b458bd22e7d1bf95bb61 ] A customer has reported a soft-lockup when running an intensive memory stress test, where the trace on multiple CPU's looks like this: RIP: 0010:[<ffffffff810c53fe>] [<ffffffff810c53fe>] native_queued_spin_lock_slowpath+0x10e/0x190 ... Call Trace: [<ffffffff81182d07>] queued_spin_lock_slowpath+0x7/0xa [<ffffffff811bc331>] change_protection_range+0x3b1/0x930 [<ffffffff811d4be8>] change_prot_numa+0x18/0x30 [<ffffffff810adefe>] task_numa_work+0x1fe/0x310 [<ffffffff81098322>] task_work_run+0x72/0x90 Further investigation showed that the lock contention here is pmd_lock(). The task_numa_work() function makes sure that only one thread is let to perform the work in a single scan period (via cmpxchg), but if there's a thread with mmap_sem locked for writing for several periods, multiple threads in task_numa_work() can build up a convoy waiting for mmap_sem for read and then all get unblocked at once. This patch changes the down_read() to the trylock version, which prevents the build up. For a workload experiencing mmap_sem contention, it's probably better to postpone the NUMA balancing work anyway. This seems to have fixed the soft lockups involving pmd_lock(), which is in line with the convoy theory. Signed-off-by: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@xxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Peter Zijlstra (Intel) <peterz@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Acked-by: Rik van Riel <riel@xxxxxxxxxx> Acked-by: Mel Gorman <mgorman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20170515131316.21909-1-vbabka@xxxxxxx Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@xxxxxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Sasha Levin <alexander.levin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> --- kernel/sched/fair.c | 3 ++- 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-) --- a/kernel/sched/fair.c +++ b/kernel/sched/fair.c @@ -2223,7 +2223,8 @@ void task_numa_work(struct callback_head return; - down_read(&mm->mmap_sem); + if (!down_read_trylock(&mm->mmap_sem)) + return; vma = find_vma(mm, start); if (!vma) { reset_ptenuma_scan(p);