tty: fix stall caused by missing memory barrier in drivers/tty/n_tty.c
commit e81107d4 upstream. My colleague ran into a program stall on a x86_64 server, where n_tty_read() was waiting for data even if there was data in the buffer in the pty. kernel stack for the stuck process looks like below. #0 [ffff88303d107b58] __schedule at ffffffff815c4b20 #1 [ffff88303d107bd0] schedule at ffffffff815c513e #2 [ffff88303d107bf0] schedule_timeout at ffffffff815c7818 #3 [ffff88303d107ca0] wait_woken at ffffffff81096bd2 #4 [ffff88303d107ce0] n_tty_read at ffffffff8136fa23 #5 [ffff88303d107dd0] tty_read at ffffffff81368013 #6 [ffff88303d107e20] __vfs_read at ffffffff811a3704 #7 [ffff88303d107ec0] vfs_read at ffffffff811a3a57 #8 [ffff88303d107f00] sys_read at ffffffff811a4306 #9 [ffff88303d107f50] entry_SYSCALL_64_fastpath at ffffffff815c86d7 There seems to be two problems causing this issue. First, in drivers/tty/n_tty.c, __receive_buf() stores the data and updates ldata->commit_head using smp_store_release() and then checks the wait queue using waitqueue_active(). However, since there is no memory barrier, __receive_buf() could return without calling wake_up_interactive_poll(), and at the same time, n_tty_read() could start to wait in wait_woken() as in the following chart. __receive_buf() n_tty_read() ------------------------------------------------------------------------ if (waitqueue_active(&tty->read_wait)) /* Memory operations issued after the RELEASE may be completed before the RELEASE operation has completed */ add_wait_queue(&tty->read_wait, &wait); ... if (!input_available_p(tty, 0)) { smp_store_release(&ldata->commit_head, ldata->read_head); ... timeout = wait_woken(&wait, TASK_INTERRUPTIBLE, timeout); ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The second problem is that n_tty_read() also lacks a memory barrier call and could also cause __receive_buf() to return without calling wake_up_interactive_poll(), and n_tty_read() to wait in wait_woken() as in the chart below. __receive_buf() n_tty_read() ------------------------------------------------------------------------ spin_lock_irqsave(&q->lock, flags); /* from add_wait_queue() */ ... if (!input_available_p(tty, 0)) { /* Memory operations issued after the RELEASE may be completed before the RELEASE operation has completed */ smp_store_release(&ldata->commit_head, ldata->read_head); if (waitqueue_active(&tty->read_wait)) __add_wait_queue(q, wait); spin_unlock_irqrestore(&q->lock,flags); /* from add_wait_queue() */ ... timeout = wait_woken(&wait, TASK_INTERRUPTIBLE, timeout); ------------------------------------------------------------------------ There are also other places in drivers/tty/n_tty.c which have similar calls to waitqueue_active(), so instead of adding many memory barrier calls, this patch simply removes the call to waitqueue_active(), leaving just wake_up*() behind. This fixes both problems because, even though the memory access before or after the spinlocks in both wake_up*() and add_wait_queue() can sneak into the critical section, it cannot go past it and the critical section assures that they will be serialized (please see "INTER-CPU ACQUIRING BARRIER EFFECTS" in Documentation/memory-barriers.txt for a better explanation). Moreover, the resulting code is much simpler. Latency measurement using a ping-pong test over a pty doesn't show any visible performance drop. Signed-off-by:Kosuke Tatsukawa <tatsu@ab.jp.nec.com> Signed-off-by:
Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org> [ luis: backported to 3.16: - always use wake_up_interruptible() instead of wake_up_interruptible_poll() - adjusted context ] Signed-off-by:
Luis Henriques <luis.henriques@canonical.com>
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