Thread (12 messages) 12 messages, 4 authors, 2011-06-13

Re: [PATCH] mm: Fix assertion mapping->nrpages == 0 in end_writeback()

From: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Date: 2011-06-06 22:16:53

On Mon, 30 May 2011 11:37:38 +0200
Jan Kara [off-list ref] wrote:
quoted hunk ↗ jump to hunk
Under heavy memory and filesystem load, users observe the assertion
mapping->nrpages == 0 in end_writeback() trigger. This can be caused
by page reclaim reclaiming the last page from a mapping in the following
race:
	CPU0				CPU1
  ...
  shrink_page_list()
    __remove_mapping()
      __delete_from_page_cache()
        radix_tree_delete()
					evict_inode()
					  truncate_inode_pages()
					    truncate_inode_pages_range()
					      pagevec_lookup() - finds nothing
					  end_writeback()
					    mapping->nrpages != 0 -> BUG
        page->mapping = NULL
        mapping->nrpages--

Fix the problem by cycling the mapping->tree_lock at the end of
truncate_inode_pages_range() to synchronize with page reclaim.

Analyzed by Jay [off-list ref], lost in LKML, and dug
out by Miklos Szeredi [off-list ref].

CC: Jay <redacted>
CC: stable@kernel.org
Acked-by: Miklos Szeredi <redacted>
Signed-off-by: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>
---
 mm/truncate.c |    7 +++++++
 1 files changed, 7 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)

 Andrew, would you merge this patch please? Thanks.
diff --git a/mm/truncate.c b/mm/truncate.c
index a956675..ec3d292 100644
--- a/mm/truncate.c
+++ b/mm/truncate.c
@@ -291,6 +291,13 @@ void truncate_inode_pages_range(struct address_space *mapping,
 		pagevec_release(&pvec);
 		mem_cgroup_uncharge_end();
 	}
+	/*
+	 * Cycle the tree_lock to make sure all __delete_from_page_cache()
+	 * calls run from page reclaim have finished as well (this handles the
+	 * case when page reclaim took the last page from our range).
+	 */
+	spin_lock_irq(&mapping->tree_lock);
+	spin_unlock_irq(&mapping->tree_lock);
 }
 EXPORT_SYMBOL(truncate_inode_pages_range);
That's one ugly patch.


Perhaps this regression was added by Nick's RCUification of pagecache. 

Before that patch, mapping->nrpages and the radix-tree state were
coherent for holders of tree_lock.  So pagevec_lookup() would never
return "no pages" while ->nrpages is non-zero.

After that patch, find_get_pages() uses RCU to protect the radix-tree
but I don't think it correctly protects the aggregate (radix-tree +
nrpages).


If it's not that then I see another possibility. 
truncate_inode_pages_range() does

        if (mapping->nrpages == 0)
                return;

Is there anything to prevent a page getting added to the inode _after_
this test?  i_mutex?  If not, that would trigger the BUG.


Either way, I don't think that the uglypatch expresses a full
understanding of te bug ;)

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