----- Original Message -----

From: "Michael Cree" <redacted>
To: "Mathieu Desnoyers" <mathieu.desnoyers@efficios.com>
Cc: "Greg KH" <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>, linux-alpha@vger.kernel.org, "Richard Henderson" <redacted>, "Ivan
Kokshaysky" [off-list ref], "Matt Turner" [off-list ref], "Huang Ying" [off-list ref],
linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, "Paul McKenney" [off-list ref], "David Howells" [off-list ref],
"Pranith Kumar" [off-list ref], stable@vger.kernel.org
Sent: Saturday, February 7, 2015 7:47:29 PM
Subject: Re: [PATCH] llist: Fix missing lockless_dereference()

On Sat, Feb 07, 2015 at 10:30:44PM +0000, Mathieu Desnoyers wrote:

quoted

quoted

On Fri, Feb 06, 2015 at 09:08:21PM -0500, Mathieu Desnoyers wrote:

quoted

A lockless_dereference() appears to be missing in llist_del_first().
It should only matter for Alpha in practice.

What could one anticipate to be the symptoms of such a missing
lockless_dereference()?

This can trigger corruption of the lockless linked-list, which is
used across a few subsystems. AFAIU, the scenario is as follows.
Please bear with me, because it's been a while since I've read on
the Alpha multi-cache-banks behavior.

The list here would be initially non-empty. Initial state of
new_last->next is unset (newly allocated); IOW: garbage. CPU A
adds a node into the list while CPU B removes a node from the
head of the list.

CPU A                                      CPU B
llist_add_batch()
- Stores to new_last->next
- implicit full mb before cmpxchg makes the
  update to CPU A's cache bank containing
  new_last->next visible to other CPUs
  before CPU A's cache bank update making
  head->first visible to other CPUs.
- cmpxchg updates head->first = new_first
                                           llist_del_first()
                                           - entry = load head->first
                                           -> here, lack of barrier on Alpha creates a window where
                                              CPU B's cache bank can see the updated "head->first",
                                              but the cache bank holding the next value did not
                                              receive the update yet, since each cache bank have
                                              their own channel, which can be independently
                                              saturated.
                                           - next = load entry->next (dereference entry pointer)
                                           - cmpxchg updates head->first = next
                                             -> can store unset "next" value into head->first, thus
                                                corrupting the linked list.

The Alpha kernel is behaving pretty well provided one builds a machine
specific kernel and UP.  When running an SMP kernel some packages
(most notably the java runtime, but there are a few others) occasionally
lock up in a pthread call --- could be a problem in libc rather then the
kernel.

Are those lockups always occasional, or you have ways to reproduce them
frequently with stress-tests ?

Thanks,

Mathieu

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Meta-comment, do we really care about Alpha anymore?  Is it still
consered an "active" arch we support?

There are a few of us still running recent kernels on Alpha.  I am
maintaining the unofficial Debian alpha port at debian-ports, and the
Debian popcon shows about 10 installations of Debian Alpha.

Cheers
Michael.

-- 
Mathieu Desnoyers
EfficiOS Inc.
http://www.efficios.com