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authorHugh Dickins <hugh.dickins@tiscali.co.uk>2009-09-21 17:02:20 -0700
committerLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>2009-09-22 07:17:32 -0700
commit9ba6929480088a85c1ff60a4b1f1c9fc80dbd2b7 (patch)
tree39aab8cdffae598b55e35c578f70820712286ab4 /kernel
parentcd551f97519d35855be5a8720a47cc802ee4fd06 (diff)
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ksm: fix oom deadlock
There's a now-obvious deadlock in KSM's out-of-memory handling: imagine ksmd or KSM_RUN_UNMERGE handling, holding ksm_thread_mutex, trying to allocate a page to break KSM in an mm which becomes the OOM victim (quite likely in the unmerge case): it's killed and goes to exit, and hangs there waiting to acquire ksm_thread_mutex. Clearly we must not require ksm_thread_mutex in __ksm_exit, simple though that made everything else: perhaps use mmap_sem somehow? And part of the answer lies in the comments on unmerge_ksm_pages: __ksm_exit should also leave all the rmap_item removal to ksmd. But there's a fundamental problem, that KSM relies upon mmap_sem to guarantee the consistency of the mm it's dealing with, yet exit_mmap tears down an mm without taking mmap_sem. And bumping mm_users won't help at all, that just ensures that the pages the OOM killer assumes are on their way to being freed will not be freed. The best answer seems to be, to move the ksm_exit callout from just before exit_mmap, to the middle of exit_mmap: after the mm's pages have been freed (if the mmu_gather is flushed), but before its page tables and vma structures have been freed; and down_write,up_write mmap_sem there to serialize with KSM's own reliance on mmap_sem. But KSM then needs to be careful, whenever it downs mmap_sem, to check that the mm is not already exiting: there's a danger of using find_vma on a layout that's being torn apart, or writing into page tables which have been freed for reuse; and even do_anonymous_page and __do_fault need to check they're not being called by break_ksm to reinstate a pte after zap_pte_range has zapped that page table. Though it might be clearer to add an exiting flag, set while holding mmap_sem in __ksm_exit, that wouldn't cover the issue of reinstating a zapped pte. All we need is to check whether mm_users is 0 - but must remember that ksmd may detect that before __ksm_exit is reached. So, ksm_test_exit(mm) added to comment such checks on mm->mm_users. __ksm_exit now has to leave clearing up the rmap_items to ksmd, that needs ksm_thread_mutex; but shift the exiting mm just after the ksm_scan cursor so that it will soon be dealt with. __ksm_enter raise mm_count to hold the mm_struct, ksmd's exit processing (exactly like its processing when it finds all VM_MERGEABLEs unmapped) mmdrop it, similar procedure for KSM_RUN_UNMERGE (which has stopped ksmd). But also give __ksm_exit a fast path: when there's no complication (no rmap_items attached to mm and it's not at the ksm_scan cursor), it can safely do all the exiting work itself. This is not just an optimization: when ksmd is not running, the raised mm_count would otherwise leak mm_structs. Signed-off-by: Hugh Dickins <hugh.dickins@tiscali.co.uk> Acked-by: Izik Eidus <ieidus@redhat.com> Cc: Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@redhat.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Diffstat (limited to 'kernel')
-rw-r--r--kernel/fork.c1
1 files changed, 0 insertions, 1 deletions
diff --git a/kernel/fork.c b/kernel/fork.c
index 73a442b..42f20f5 100644
--- a/kernel/fork.c
+++ b/kernel/fork.c
@@ -501,7 +501,6 @@ void mmput(struct mm_struct *mm)
if (atomic_dec_and_test(&mm->mm_users)) {
exit_aio(mm);
- ksm_exit(mm);
exit_mmap(mm);
set_mm_exe_file(mm, NULL);
if (!list_empty(&mm->mmlist)) {
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