[dpdk-dev] [PATCH 2/2] kni: fix rtnl deadlocks and race conditions v3

Igor Ryzhov iryzhov at nfware.com
Wed Feb 24 15:04:42 CET 2021


Elad,

I understand your point.
But the fact that this fix works for you doesn't mean that it will work for
all DPDK users.

For example, I provided two simple commands: "ip link set up" and "ip link
set down".
Your fix works for only one of them. For me, this is not a proper fix.
It may work for you because you don't disable interfaces, but it will fail
for users who do.

On Wed, Feb 24, 2021 at 4:33 PM Elad Nachman <eladv6 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Currently KNI has a lot of issues with deadlocks locking the code,
> after this commit, they are gone, and the code runs properly without
> crashing.
> That was tested with over 100 restarts of the application, which
> previously required a hard reset of the board.
>
> I think this benefit overweights the complication of the code.
>
> The function is called with rtnl locked because this is how the Linux
> kernel is designed to work - it is not designed to work with deferral
> to user-space mid-function.
>
> To fix all such requests you need to reach an agreement with Linux
> netdev, which is unlikely.
>
> Calling user-space can be done asynchronously, as Ferruh asked, but
> then you will always have to return success, even on failure, as Linux
> kernel does not have a mechanism to asynchronously report on failure
> for such system calls.
>
> IMHO - weighting the non-reporting of failure versus how the code
> looks (as it functions perfectly OK), I decided to go with
> functionality.
>
> FYI,
>
> Elad.
>
> On Wed, Feb 24, 2021 at 2:50 PM Igor Ryzhov <iryzhov at nfware.com> wrote:
> >
> > This looks more like a hack than an actual fix to me.
> >
> > After this commit:
> > "ip link set up" is sent to the userspace with unlocked rtnl_lock
> > "ip link set down" is sent to the userspace with locked rtnl_lock
> >
> > How is this really fixing anything? IMHO it only complicates the code.
> > If talking with userspace under rtnl_lock is a problem, then we should
> fix all such requests, not only part of them.
> > If it is not a problem, then I don't see any point in merging this.
> >
> > On Tue, Feb 23, 2021 at 4:45 PM Elad Nachman <eladv6 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> This part of the series includes my fixes for the issues reported
> >> by Ferruh and Igor on top of part 1 of the patch series:
> >>
> >> A. KNI sync lock is being locked while rtnl is held.
> >> If two threads are calling kni_net_process_request() ,
> >> then the first one will take the sync lock, release rtnl lock then
> sleep.
> >> The second thread will try to lock sync lock while holding rtnl.
> >> The first thread will wake, and try to lock rtnl, resulting in a
> deadlock.
> >> The remedy is to release rtnl before locking the KNI sync lock.
> >> Since in between nothing is accessing Linux network-wise,
> >> no rtnl locking is needed.
> >>
> >> B. There is a race condition in __dev_close_many() processing the
> >> close_list while the application terminates.
> >> It looks like if two vEth devices are terminating,
> >> and one releases the rtnl lock, the other takes it,
> >> updating the close_list in an unstable state,
> >> causing the close_list to become a circular linked list,
> >> hence list_for_each_entry() will endlessly loop inside
> >> __dev_close_many() .
> >> Since the description for the original patch indicate the
> >> original motivation was bringing the device up,
> >> I have changed kni_net_process_request() to hold the rtnl mutex
> >> in case of bringing the device down since this is the path called
> >> from __dev_close_many() , causing the corruption of the close_list.
> >>
> >> Signed-off-by: Elad Nachman <eladv6 at gmail.com>
> >> ---
> >> v3:
> >> * Include original patch and new patch as a series of patch, added a
> >>   comment to the new patch
> >> v2:
> >> * rebuild the patch as increment from patch 64106
> >> * fix comment and blank lines
> >> ---
> >>  kernel/linux/kni/kni_net.c | 29 +++++++++++++++++++++--------
> >>  1 file changed, 21 insertions(+), 8 deletions(-)
> >>
> >> diff --git a/kernel/linux/kni/kni_net.c b/kernel/linux/kni/kni_net.c
> >> index f0b6e9a8d..017e44812 100644
> >> --- a/kernel/linux/kni/kni_net.c
> >> +++ b/kernel/linux/kni/kni_net.c
> >> @@ -110,9 +110,26 @@ kni_net_process_request(struct net_device *dev,
> struct rte_kni_request *req)
> >>         void *resp_va;
> >>         uint32_t num;
> >>         int ret_val;
> >> +       int req_is_dev_stop = 0;
> >> +
> >> +       /* For configuring the interface to down,
> >> +        * rtnl must be held all the way to prevent race condition
> >> +        * inside __dev_close_many() between two netdev instances of KNI
> >> +        */
> >> +       if (req->req_id == RTE_KNI_REQ_CFG_NETWORK_IF &&
> >> +                       req->if_up == 0)
> >> +               req_is_dev_stop = 1;
> >>
> >>         ASSERT_RTNL();
> >>
> >> +       /* Since we need to wait and RTNL mutex is held
> >> +        * drop the mutex and hold reference to keep device
> >> +        */
> >> +       if (!req_is_dev_stop) {
> >> +               dev_hold(dev);
> >> +               rtnl_unlock();
> >> +       }
> >> +
> >>         mutex_lock(&kni->sync_lock);
> >>
> >>         /* Construct data */
> >> @@ -124,16 +141,8 @@ kni_net_process_request(struct net_device *dev,
> struct rte_kni_request *req)
> >>                 goto fail;
> >>         }
> >>
> >> -       /* Since we need to wait and RTNL mutex is held
> >> -        * drop the mutex and hold refernce to keep device
> >> -        */
> >> -       dev_hold(dev);
> >> -       rtnl_unlock();
> >> -
> >>         ret_val = wait_event_interruptible_timeout(kni->wq,
> >>                         kni_fifo_count(kni->resp_q), 3 * HZ);
> >> -       rtnl_lock();
> >> -       dev_put(dev);
> >>
> >>         if (signal_pending(current) || ret_val <= 0) {
> >>                 ret = -ETIME;
> >> @@ -152,6 +161,10 @@ kni_net_process_request(struct net_device *dev,
> struct rte_kni_request *req)
> >>
> >>  fail:
> >>         mutex_unlock(&kni->sync_lock);
> >> +       if (!req_is_dev_stop) {
> >> +               rtnl_lock();
> >> +               dev_put(dev);
> >> +       }
> >>         return ret;
> >>  }
> >>
> >> --
> >> 2.17.1
> >>
>


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