So the problem this patch is trying to address is as follows:

        CPU0                            CPU1

        context_switch(A, B)
                                        ttwu(A)
                                          LOCK A->pi_lock
                                          A->on_cpu == 0
        finish_task_switch(A)
          prev_state = A->state  <-.
          WMB                      |
          A->on_cpu = 0;           |
          UNLOCK rq0->lock         |
                                   |    context_switch(C, A)
                                   `--  A->state = TASK_DEAD
          prev_state == TASK_DEAD
            put_task_struct(A)
                                        context_switch(A, C)
                                        finish_task_switch(A)
                                          A->state == TASK_DEAD
                                            put_task_struct(A)

The argument being that the WMB will allow the load of A->state on CPU0
to cross over and observe CPU1's store of A->state, which will then
result in a double-drop and use-after-free.

Now the comment states (and this was true once upon a long time ago)
that we need to observe A->state while holding rq->lock because that
will order us against the wakeup; however the wakeup will not in fact
acquire (that) rq->lock; it takes A->pi_lock these days.

We can obviously fix this by upgrading the WMB to an MB, but that is
expensive, so we'd rather avoid that.

The alternative this patch takes is: smp_store_release(&A->on_cpu, 0),
which avoids the MB on some archs, but not important ones like ARM.
Reported-by: Oleg Nesterov <oleg@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Peter Zijlstra (Intel) <peterz@infradead.org>
Acked-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: <stable@vger.kernel.org> # v3.1+
Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Cc: manfred@colorfullife.com
Cc: will.deacon@arm.com
Fixes: e4a52bcb ("sched: Remove rq->lock from the first half of ttwu()")
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20150929124509.GG3816@twins.programming.kicks-ass.netSigned-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org>