[PATCH] sysfs_remove_dir-vs-dcache_readdir race fix
From: Maneesh Soni <maneesh@in.ibm.com> I have re-done the patch fixing the race between sysfs_remove_dir() and dcache_readdir(). If you recall, sysfs_remove_dir(kobj) manipulates the ->d_subdirs list for the dentry corresponding to the sysfs directory being removed. It can end up deleting the cursor dentry which is added to the ->d_subdirs list during a concurrent dcache_dir_open() ==> dcache_readdir() for the same directory. And as a result dcache_readdir() can loop for ever holding dcache_lock. The earlier patch which was included in -mm1 created problems which resulted in list_del() BUG hits in prune_dcache(). The reason I think is that in the main loop in sysfs_remove_dir(), dcache_lock is dropped and re-acquired, and this could result in inconsistent ->d_subdirs list and prune_dcache() may try to delete an already deleted dentry. I have corrected this in the new patch as below. I could do sysfs_remove_dir() more neatly on sysfs backing store patch set as there I don't use the ->d_subdirs list. Instead the list of children sysfs_dirent works out well. But untill sysfs backing store patch is picked up the existing code suffer from this race. This can be easily tested by running following two loops on a SMP box # while true; do insmod drivers/net/dummy.ko; rmmod dummy; done # while true; do find /sys/class/net > /dev/null; done o This patch fixes sysfs_remove_dir race with dcache_readdir. There is no need for sysfs_remove_dir to modify the d_subdirs list for the directory being deleted as it is taken care in the final dput. Modifying this list results in inconsistent d_subdirs list and causes infinite loop in concurrently occurring dcache_readdir. o The main loop is restarted every time, dcache_lock is re-acquired in order to maintain consistency.
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