On Thu, Apr 12, 2018 at 06:57:12AM -0700, Tejun Heo wrote: > On Thu, Apr 12, 2018 at 07:05:13AM +0800, Ming Lei wrote: > > > Not really because aborted_gstate right now doesn't have any memory > > > barrier around it, so nothing ensures blk_add_timer() actually appears > > > before. We can either add the matching barriers in aborted_gstate > > > update and when it's read in the normal completion path, or we can > > > wait for the update to be visible everywhere by waiting for rcu grace > > > period (because the reader is rcu protected). > > > > Seems not necessary. > > > > Suppose it is out of order, the only side-effect is that the new > > recycled request is timed out as a bit late, I think that is what > > we can survive, right? > > It at least can mess up the timeout duration for the next recycle > instance because there can be two competing blk_add_timer() instances. > I'm not sure whether there can be other consequences. When ownership > isn't clear, it becomes really difficult to reason about these things > and can lead to subtle failures. I think it'd be best to always > establish who owns what. Please see the code of blk_add_timer() for blk-mq: blk_rq_set_deadline(req, jiffies + req->timeout); req->rq_flags &= ~RQF_MQ_TIMEOUT_EXPIRED; if (!timer_pending(&q->timeout) || time_before(expiry, q->timeout.expires)) mod_timer(&q->timeout, expiry); If this rq is recycled, blk_add_timer() only touches rq->deadline and the EXPIRED flags, and the only effect is that the timeout may be handled a bit late, but the timeout monitor won't be lost. And this thing shouldn't be difficult to avoid, as you mentioned, synchronize_rcu() can be added between blk_add_timer() and resetting aborted gstate for avoiding it. thanks, Ming