Re: 2.6.18-rc5 with GRE, iptables and Speedtouch ADSL, PPP over ATM

[Larry Finger <Larry.Finger@lwfinger.net>]

Herbert Xu wrote:
> [NET]: Drop tx lock in dev_watchdog_up
> 
> On Sat, Sep 02, 2006 at 08:39:28PM +0000, Krzysztof Halasa wrote:
>> =======================================================
>> [ INFO: possible circular locking dependency detected ]
>> -------------------------------------------------------
>> swapper/0 is trying to acquire lock:
>>  (&dev->queue_lock){-+..}, at: [<c02c8c46>] dev_queue_xmit+0x56/0x290
>>
>> but task is already holding lock:
>>  (&dev->_xmit_lock){-+..}, at: [<c02c8e14>] dev_queue_xmit+0x224/0x290
>>
>> which lock already depends on the new lock.
> 
> This turns out to be a genuine bug.  The queue lock and xmit lock are
> intentionally taken out of order.  Two things are supposed to prevent
> dead-locks from occuring:
> 
> 1) When we hold the queue_lock we're supposed to only do try_lock on the
> tx_lock.
> 
> 2) We always drop the queue_lock after taking the tx_lock and before doing
> anything else.
> 
>> the existing dependency chain (in reverse order) is:
>>
>> -> #1 (&dev->_xmit_lock){-+..}:
>>        [<c012e7b6>] lock_acquire+0x76/0xa0
>>        [<c0336241>] _spin_lock_bh+0x31/0x40
>>        [<c02d25a9>] dev_activate+0x69/0x120
> 
> This path obviously breaks assumption 1) and therefore can lead to ABBA
> dead-locks.
> 
> I've looked at the history and there seems to be no reason for the lock
> to be held at all in dev_watchdog_up.  The lock appeared in day one and
> even there it was unnecessary.  In fact, people added __dev_watchdog_up
> precisely in order to get around the tx lock there.
> 
> The function dev_watchdog_up is already serialised by rtnl_lock since
> its only caller dev_activate is always called under it.
> 
> So here is a simple patch to remove the tx lock from dev_watchdog_up.
> In 2.6.19 we can eliminate the unnecessary __dev_watchdog_up and
> replace it with dev_watchdog_up.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Herbert Xu <herbert@gondor.apana.org.au>

This patch also fixes a circular locking problem that I found on Linville's wireless-dev tree
involving ieee80211 and wpa_supplicant.

Larry Finger




-- 
VGER BF report: H 1.06514e-06
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