writeback: fix a subtle race condition in I_DIRTY clearing
commit 9c6ac78e upstream. After invoking ->dirty_inode(), __mark_inode_dirty() does smp_mb() and tests inode->i_state locklessly to see whether it already has all the necessary I_DIRTY bits set. The comment above the barrier doesn't contain any useful information - memory barriers can't ensure "changes are seen by all cpus" by itself. And it sure enough was broken. Please consider the following scenario. CPU 0 CPU 1 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- enters __writeback_single_inode() grabs inode->i_lock tests PAGECACHE_TAG_DIRTY which is clear enters __set_page_dirty() grabs mapping->tree_lock sets PAGECACHE_TAG_DIRTY releases mapping->tree_lock leaves __set_page_dirty() enters __mark_inode_dirty() smp_mb() sees I_DIRTY_PAGES set leaves __mark_inode_dirty() clears I_DIRTY_PAGES releases inode->i_lock Now @inode has dirty pages w/ I_DIRTY_PAGES clear. This doesn't seem to lead to an immediately critical problem because requeue_inode() later checks PAGECACHE_TAG_DIRTY instead of I_DIRTY_PAGES when deciding whether the inode needs to be requeued for IO and there are enough unintentional memory barriers inbetween, so while the inode ends up with inconsistent I_DIRTY_PAGES flag, it doesn't fall off the IO list. The lack of explicit barrier may also theoretically affect the other I_DIRTY bits which deal with metadata dirtiness. There is no guarantee that a strong enough barrier exists between I_DIRTY_[DATA]SYNC clearing and write_inode() writing out the dirtied inode. Filesystem inode writeout path likely has enough stuff which can behave as full barrier but it's theoretically possible that the writeout may not see all the updates from ->dirty_inode(). Fix it by adding an explicit smp_mb() after I_DIRTY clearing. Note that I_DIRTY_PAGES needs a special treatment as it always needs to be cleared to be interlocked with the lockless test on __mark_inode_dirty() side. It's cleared unconditionally and reinstated after smp_mb() if the mapping still has dirty pages. Also add comments explaining how and why the barriers are paired. Lightly tested. Signed-off-by: Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org> Cc: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz> Cc: Mikulas Patocka <mpatocka@redhat.com> Cc: Jens Axboe <axboe@kernel.dk> Cc: Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk> Reviewed-by: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz> Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe <axboe@fb.com> Signed-off-by: Zefan Li <lizefan@huawei.com>
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