block: Avoid deadlocks with bio allocation by stacking drivers
Previously, if we ever try to allocate more than once from the same bio set while running under generic_make_request() (i.e. a stacking block driver), we risk deadlock. This is because of the code in generic_make_request() that converts recursion to iteration; any bios we submit won't actually be submitted (so they can complete and eventually be freed) until after we return - this means if we allocate a second bio, we're blocking the first one from ever being freed. Thus if enough threads call into a stacking block driver at the same time with bios that need multiple splits, and the bio_set's reserve gets used up, we deadlock. This can be worked around in the driver code - we could check if we're running under generic_make_request(), then mask out __GFP_WAIT when we go to allocate a bio, and if the allocation fails punt to workqueue and retry the allocation. But this is tricky and not a generic solution. This patch solves it for all users by inverting the previously described technique. We allocate a rescuer workqueue for each bio_set, and then in the allocation code if there are bios on current->bio_list we would be blocking, we punt them to the rescuer workqueue to be submitted. This guarantees forward progress for bio allocations under generic_make_request() provided each bio is submitted before allocating the next, and provided the bios are freed after they complete. Note that this doesn't do anything for allocation from other mempools. Instead of allocating per bio data structures from a mempool, code should use bio_set's front_pad. Tested it by forcing the rescue codepath to be taken (by disabling the first GFP_NOWAIT) attempt, and then ran it with bcache (which does a lot of arbitrary bio splitting) and verified that the rescuer was being invoked. Signed-off-by: Kent Overstreet <koverstreet@google.com> CC: Jens Axboe <axboe@kernel.dk> Acked-by: Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org> Reviewed-by: Muthukumar Ratty <muthur@gmail.com>
Loading
Please register or sign in to comment