[BUG] Deferred probing in driver model is racy, resulting in lost probes

On Sun, Sep 16, 2012 at 4:25 PM, Russell King - ARM Linux
[off-list ref] wrote:

It isn't.  As I said, it's a race condition due to lack of locking - the
driver hasn't been added to the list of drivers at this point:

int bus_add_driver(struct device_driver *drv)
{
...
        if (drv->bus->p->drivers_autoprobe) {
                error = driver_attach(drv);
                if (error)
                        goto out_unregister;
        }
        klist_add_tail(&priv->knode_bus, &bus->p->klist_drivers);
...
}

Notice that the attaching is done _before_ the driver is added to the
bus driver list.

Yes, it is a problem since a new device may be added to bus
and bus_probe_device() may not see the new added driver.

So looks klist_add_tail() should complete before driver_attach()
inside bus_add_driver().

The attached one line change should fix the problem because the
below way can guarantee that no probe(dev) may be lost.


CPU0				CPU1
driver_register
	...
	write(bus->driver_list)
	smp_mb()
	read(bus->device_list)
	...
				device_add
					/* bus_add_device */	
					write(bus->device_list)
					smp_mb()
					/* bus_probe_device*/
					read(bus->driver_list)

And the smp_mb() has been implicit by UNLOCK+LOCK
of 'klist' according to 'VARIETIES OF MEMORY BARRIER' part
of Documentation/memory-barriers.txt.

Could you test the below patch to see if it can fix your problem?

diff --git a/drivers/base/bus.c b/drivers/base/bus.c
index 181ed26..17d7437 100644
--- a/drivers/base/bus.c
+++ b/drivers/base/bus.c

@@ -714,12 +714,12 @@ int bus_add_driver(struct device_driver *drv)
 	if (error)
 		goto out_unregister;

+	klist_add_tail(&priv->knode_bus, &bus->p->klist_drivers);
 	if (drv->bus->p->drivers_autoprobe) {
 		error = driver_attach(drv);
 		if (error)
 			goto out_unregister;
 	}
-	klist_add_tail(&priv->knode_bus, &bus->p->klist_drivers);
 	module_add_driver(drv->owner, drv);

 	error = driver_create_file(drv, &driver_attr_uevent);

Thanks,
-- 
Ming Lei