This patch implements what I discussed in Kernel Summit. I added
lockdep annotation (hopefully correctly), and it hasn't had any splats
(since I fixed some bugs in the first iterations). It did catch
problems when I had the owner covering too much. But now that the owner
is only set when actively calling the consoles, lockdep has stayed
quiet.

Here's the design again:

I added a "console_owner" which is set to a task that is actively
writing to the consoles. It is *not* the same as the owner of the
console_lock. It is only set when doing the calls to the console
functions. It is protected by a console_owner_lock which is a raw spin
lock.

There is a console_waiter. This is set when there is an active console
owner that is not current, and waiter is not set. This too is protected
by console_owner_lock.

In printk() when it tries to write to the consoles, we have:

	if (console_trylock())
		console_unlock();

Now I added an else, which will check if there is an active owner, and
no current waiter. If that is the case, then console_waiter is set, and
the task goes into a spin until it is no longer set.

When the active console owner finishes writing the current message to
the consoles, it grabs the console_owner_lock and sees if there is a
waiter, and clears console_owner.

If there is a waiter, then it breaks out of the loop, clears the waiter
flag (because that will release the waiter from its spin), and exits.
Note, it does *not* release the console semaphore. Because it is a
semaphore, there is no owner. Another task may release it. This means
that the waiter is guaranteed to be the new console owner! Which it
becomes.

Then the waiter calls console_unlock() and continues to write to the
consoles.

If another task comes along and does a printk() it too can become the
new waiter, and we wash rinse and repeat!

By Petr Mladek about possible new deadlocks:

The thing is that we move console_sem only to printk() call
that normally calls console_unlock() as well. It means that
the transferred owner should not bring new type of dependencies.
As Steven said somewhere: "If there is a deadlock, it was
there even before."

We could look at it from this side. The possible deadlock would
look like:

CPU0                            CPU1

console_unlock()

  console_owner = current;

				spin_lockA()
				  printk()
				    spin = true;
				    while (...)

    call_console_drivers()
      spin_lockA()

This would be a deadlock. CPU0 would wait for the lock A.
While CPU1 would own the lockA and would wait for CPU0
to finish calling the console drivers and pass the console_sem
owner.

But if the above is true than the following scenario was
already possible before:

CPU0

spin_lockA()
  printk()
    console_unlock()
      call_console_drivers()
	spin_lockA()

By other words, this deadlock was there even before. Such
deadlocks are prevented by using printk_deferred() in
the sections guarded by the lock A.

By Steven Rostedt:

To demonstrate the issue, this module has been shown to lock up a
system with 4 CPUs and a slow console (like a serial console). It is
also able to lock up a 8 CPU system with only a fast (VGA) console, by
passing in "loops=100". The changes in this commit prevent this module
from locking up the system.

 #include <linux/module.h>
 #include <linux/delay.h>
 #include <linux/sched.h>
 #include <linux/mutex.h>
 #include <linux/workqueue.h>
 #include <linux/hrtimer.h>

 static bool stop_testing;
 static unsigned int loops = 1;

 static void preempt_printk_workfn(struct work_struct *work)
 {
 	int i;

 	while (!READ_ONCE(stop_testing)) {
 		for (i = 0; i < loops && !READ_ONCE(stop_testing); i++) {
 			preempt_disable();
 			pr_emerg("%5d%-75s\n", smp_processor_id(),
 				 " XXX NOPREEMPT");
 			preempt_enable();
 		}
 		msleep(1);
 	}
 }

 static struct work_struct __percpu *works;

 static void finish(void)
 {
 	int cpu;

 	WRITE_ONCE(stop_testing, true);
 	for_each_online_cpu(cpu)
 		flush_work(per_cpu_ptr(works, cpu));
 	free_percpu(works);
 }

 static int __init test_init(void)
 {
 	int cpu;

 	works = alloc_percpu(struct work_struct);
 	if (!works)
 		return -ENOMEM;

 	/*
 	 * This is just a test module. This will break if you
 	 * do any CPU hot plugging between loading and
 	 * unloading the module.
 	 */

 	for_each_online_cpu(cpu) {
 		struct work_struct *work = per_cpu_ptr(works, cpu);

 		INIT_WORK(work, &preempt_printk_workfn);
 		schedule_work_on(cpu, work);
 	}

 	return 0;
 }

 static void __exit test_exit(void)
 {
 	finish();
 }

 module_param(loops, uint, 0);
 module_init(test_init);
 module_exit(test_exit);
 MODULE_LICENSE("GPL");

Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20180110132418.7080-2-pmladek@suse.com


Cc: akpm@linux-foundation.org
Cc: linux-mm@kvack.org
Cc: Cong Wang <xiyou.wangcong@gmail.com>
Cc: Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@intel.com>
Cc: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org>
Cc: Mel Gorman <mgorman@suse.de>
Cc: Michal Hocko <mhocko@kernel.org>
Cc: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz>
Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
Cc: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>
Cc: Mathieu Desnoyers <mathieu.desnoyers@efficios.com>
Cc: Tetsuo Handa <penguin-kernel@I-love.SAKURA.ne.jp>
Cc: Byungchul Park <byungchul.park@lge.com>
Cc: Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org>
Cc: Pavel Machek <pavel@ucw.cz>
Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Signed-off-by: Steven Rostedt (VMware) <rostedt@goodmis.org>
[pmladek@suse.com: Commit message about possible deadlocks]
Acked-by: Sergey Senozhatsky <sergey.senozhatsky@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>