Re: [PATCH 1/4] locking/ww_mutex: Fix a deadlock affecting ww_mutexes

From: Peter Zijlstra
Date: Wed Nov 23 2016 - 08:01:07 EST


On Wed, Nov 23, 2016 at 12:25:22PM +0100, Nicolai Hähnle wrote:
> From: Nicolai Hähnle <Nicolai.Haehnle@xxxxxxx>
>
> Fix a race condition involving 4 threads and 2 ww_mutexes as indicated in
> the following example. Acquire context stamps are ordered like the thread
> numbers, i.e. thread #1 should back off when it encounters a mutex locked
> by thread #0 etc.
>
> Thread #0 Thread #1 Thread #2 Thread #3
> --------- --------- --------- ---------
> lock(ww)
> success
> lock(ww')
> success
> lock(ww)
> lock(ww) .
> . . unlock(ww) part 1
> lock(ww) . . .
> success . . .
> . . unlock(ww) part 2
> . back off
> lock(ww') .
> . .
> (stuck) (stuck)
>
> Here, unlock(ww) part 1 is the part that sets lock->base.count to 1
> (without being protected by lock->base.wait_lock), meaning that thread #0
> can acquire ww in the fast path or, much more likely, the medium path
> in mutex_optimistic_spin. Since lock->base.count == 0, thread #0 then
> won't wake up any of the waiters in ww_mutex_set_context_fastpath.
>
> Then, unlock(ww) part 2 wakes up _only_the_first_ waiter of ww. This is
> thread #2, since waiters are added at the tail. Thread #2 wakes up and
> backs off since it sees ww owned by a context with a lower stamp.
>
> Meanwhile, thread #1 is never woken up, and so it won't back off its lock
> on ww'. So thread #0 gets stuck waiting for ww' to be released.
>
> This patch fixes the deadlock by waking up all waiters in the slow path
> of ww_mutex_unlock.
>
> We have an internal test case for amdgpu which continuously submits
> command streams from tens of threads, where all command streams reference
> hundreds of GPU buffer objects with a lot of overlap in the buffer lists
> between command streams. This test reliably caused a deadlock, and while I
> haven't completely confirmed that it is exactly the scenario outlined
> above, this patch does fix the test case.
>
> v2:
> - use wake_q_add
> - add additional explanations
>
> Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Cc: Chris Wilson <chris@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Cc: Maarten Lankhorst <maarten.lankhorst@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Cc: dri-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Cc: stable@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Reviewed-by: Christian König <christian.koenig@xxxxxxx> (v1)
> Signed-off-by: Nicolai Hähnle <nicolai.haehnle@xxxxxxx>

Completely and utterly fails to apply; I think this patch is based on
code prior to the mutex rewrite.

Please rebase on tip/locking/core.

Also, is this a regression, or has this been a 'feature' of the ww_mutex
code from early on?