[ 3.5.y.z extended stable ] Patch "swap: avoid read_swap_cache_async() race to deadlock while" has been added to staging queue

[Luis Henriques]

This is a note to let you know that I have just added a patch titled

    swap: avoid read_swap_cache_async() race to deadlock while

to the linux-3.5.y-queue branch of the 3.5.y.z extended stable tree 
which can be found at:

 http://kernel.ubuntu.com/git?p=ubuntu/linux.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/linux-3.5.y-queue

If you, or anyone else, feels it should not be added to this tree, please 
reply to this email.

For more information about the 3.5.y.z tree, see
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/Dev/ExtendedStable

Thanks.
-Luis

------

>From f55b9303094f6f903f6a0ea961c1009af8efc334 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Rafael Aquini <aquini at redhat.com>
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2013 14:04:49 -0700
Subject: [PATCH] swap: avoid read_swap_cache_async() race to deadlock while
 waiting on discard I/O completion

commit cbab0e4eec299e9059199ebe6daf48730be46d2b upstream.

read_swap_cache_async() can race against get_swap_page(), and stumble
across a SWAP_HAS_CACHE entry in the swap map whose page wasn't brought
into the swapcache yet.

This transient swap_map state is expected to be transitory, but the
actual placement of discard at scan_swap_map() inserts a wait for I/O
completion thus making the thread at read_swap_cache_async() to loop
around its -EEXIST case, while the other end at get_swap_page() is
scheduled away at scan_swap_map().  This can leave the system deadlocked
if the I/O completion happens to be waiting on the CPU waitqueue where
read_swap_cache_async() is busy looping and !CONFIG_PREEMPT.

This patch introduces a cond_resched() call to make the aforementioned
read_swap_cache_async() busy loop condition to bail out when necessary,
thus avoiding the subtle race window.

Signed-off-by: Rafael Aquini <aquini at redhat.com>
Acked-by: Johannes Weiner <hannes at cmpxchg.org>
Acked-by: KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro at jp.fujitsu.com>
Acked-by: Hugh Dickins <hughd at google.com>
Cc: Shaohua Li <shli at kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm at linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds at linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Luis Henriques <luis.henriques at canonical.com>
---
 mm/swap_state.c | 18 +++++++++++++++++-
 1 file changed, 17 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/mm/swap_state.c b/mm/swap_state.c
index 4c5ff7f..1fa9220 100644
--- a/mm/swap_state.c
+++ b/mm/swap_state.c
@@ -313,8 +313,24 @@ struct page *read_swap_cache_async(swp_entry_t entry, gfp_t gfp_mask,
 		 * Swap entry may have been freed since our caller observed it.
 		 */
 		err = swapcache_prepare(entry);
-		if (err == -EEXIST) {	/* seems racy */
+		if (err == -EEXIST) {
 			radix_tree_preload_end();
+			/*
+			 * We might race against get_swap_page() and stumble
+			 * across a SWAP_HAS_CACHE swap_map entry whose page
+			 * has not been brought into the swapcache yet, while
+			 * the other end is scheduled away waiting on discard
+			 * I/O completion at scan_swap_map().
+			 *
+			 * In order to avoid turning this transitory state
+			 * into a permanent loop around this -EEXIST case
+			 * if !CONFIG_PREEMPT and the I/O completion happens
+			 * to be waiting on the CPU waitqueue where we are now
+			 * busy looping, we just conditionally invoke the
+			 * scheduler here, if there are some more important
+			 * tasks to run.
+			 */
+			cond_resched();
 			continue;
 		}
 		if (err) {		/* swp entry is obsolete ? */
--
1.8.1.2