Thread (31 messages) 31 messages, 6 authors, 2019-07-23

Re: INFO: rcu detected stall in ext4_write_checks

From: Dmitry Vyukov <dvyukov@google.com>
Date: 2019-07-05 15:48:47
Also in: linux-ext4, lkml

On Fri, Jul 5, 2019 at 5:17 PM Paul E. McKenney [off-list ref] wrote:
On Fri, Jul 05, 2019 at 03:24:26PM +0200, Dmitry Vyukov wrote:
quoted
On Thu, Jun 27, 2019 at 12:47 AM Theodore Ts'o [off-list ref] wrote:
quoted
More details about what is going on.  First, it requires root, because
one of that is required is using sched_setattr (which is enough to
shoot yourself in the foot):

sched_setattr(0, {size=0, sched_policy=0x6 /* SCHED_??? */, sched_flags=0, sched_nice=0, sched_priority=0, sched_runtime=2251799813724439, sched_deadline=4611686018427453437, sched_period=0}, 0) = 0

This is setting the scheduler policy to be SCHED_DEADLINE, with a
runtime parameter of 2251799.813724439 seconds (or 26 days) and a
deadline of 4611686018.427453437 seconds (or 146 *years*).  This means
a particular kernel thread can run for up to 26 **days** before it is
scheduled away, and if a kernel reads gets woken up or sent a signal,
no worries, it will wake up roughly seven times the interval that Rip
Van Winkle spent snoozing in a cave in the Catskill Mountains (in
Washington Irving's short story).

We then kick off a half-dozen threads all running:

   sendfile(fd, fd, &pos, 0x8080fffffffe);

(and since count is a ridiculously large number, this gets cut down to):

   sendfile(fd, fd, &pos, 2147479552);

Is it any wonder that we are seeing RCU stalls?   :-)
+Peter, Ingo for sched_setattr and +Paul for rcu

First of all: is it a semi-intended result of a root (CAP_SYS_NICE)
doing local DoS abusing sched_setattr? It would perfectly reasonable
to starve other processes, but I am not sure about rcu. In the end the
high prio process can use rcu itself, and then it will simply blow
system memory by stalling rcu. So it seems that rcu stalls should not
happen as a result of weird sched_setattr values. If that is the case,
what needs to be fixed? sched_setattr? rcu? sendfile?
Does the (untested, probably does not even build) patch shown below help?
This patch assumes that the kernel was built with CONFIG_PREEMPT=n.
And that I found all the tight loops on the do_sendfile() code path.
The config used when this happened is referenced from here:
https://syzkaller.appspot.com/bug?extid=4bfbbf28a2e50ab07368
and it contains:
CONFIG_PREEMPT=y

So... what does this mean? The loop should have been preempted without
the cond_resched() then, right?
quoted hunk ↗ jump to hunk
quoted
If this is semi-intended, the only option I see is to disable
something in syzkaller: sched_setattr entirely, or drop CAP_SYS_NICE,
or ...? Any preference either way?
Long-running tight loops in the kernel really should contain
cond_resched() or better.

                                                        Thanx, Paul

------------------------------------------------------------------------
diff --git a/fs/splice.c b/fs/splice.c
index 25212dcca2df..50aa3286764a 100644
--- a/fs/splice.c
+++ b/fs/splice.c
@@ -985,6 +985,7 @@ ssize_t splice_direct_to_actor(struct file *in, struct splice_desc *sd,
                        sd->pos = prev_pos + ret;
                        goto out_release;
                }
+               cond_resched();
        }

 done:
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