diff options
author | David Hildenbrand <david@redhat.com> | 2018-10-11 07:58:17 +0300 |
---|---|---|
committer | Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net> | 2018-10-12 11:14:19 -0600 |
commit | 3a7452c5a72bd8098f6d4b37341e25a8725d790b (patch) | |
tree | 63083f500b1cc0f7967a3f19425bb248bdcc53de /Documentation | |
parent | 52d7e21fd5677829353f7490723adf5f61999d84 (diff) |
docs/core-api: memory-hotplug: add some details about locking internals
Let's document the magic a bit, especially why device_hotplug_lock is
required when adding/removing memory and how it all play together with
requests to online/offline memory from user space.
[ rppt: moved the text to Documentation/core-api/memory-hotplug.rst ]
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20180925091457.28651-7-david@redhat.com
Signed-off-by: David Hildenbrand <david@redhat.com>
Reviewed-by: Pavel Tatashin <pavel.tatashin@microsoft.com>
Reviewed-by: Rashmica Gupta <rashmica.g@gmail.com>
Cc: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
Cc: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com>
Cc: Balbir Singh <bsingharora@gmail.com>
Cc: Benjamin Herrenschmidt <benh@kernel.crashing.org>
Cc: Boris Ostrovsky <boris.ostrovsky@oracle.com>
Cc: Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@intel.com>
Cc: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
Cc: Haiyang Zhang <haiyangz@microsoft.com>
Cc: Heiko Carstens <heiko.carstens@de.ibm.com>
Cc: John Allen <jallen@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Cc: Joonsoo Kim <iamjoonsoo.kim@lge.com>
Cc: Juergen Gross <jgross@suse.com>
Cc: Kate Stewart <kstewart@linuxfoundation.org>
Cc: "K. Y. Srinivasan" <kys@microsoft.com>
Cc: Len Brown <lenb@kernel.org>
Cc: Martin Schwidefsky <schwidefsky@de.ibm.com>
Cc: Mathieu Malaterre <malat@debian.org>
Cc: Michael Ellerman <mpe@ellerman.id.au>
Cc: Michael Neuling <mikey@neuling.org>
Cc: Nathan Fontenot <nfont@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Cc: Oscar Salvador <osalvador@suse.de>
Cc: Paul Mackerras <paulus@samba.org>
Cc: Philippe Ombredanne <pombredanne@nexb.com>
Cc: Rafael J. Wysocki <rafael.j.wysocki@intel.com>
Cc: "Rafael J. Wysocki" <rjw@rjwysocki.net>
Cc: Stephen Hemminger <sthemmin@microsoft.com>
Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Cc: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz>
Cc: YASUAKI ISHIMATSU <yasu.isimatu@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Mike Rapoport <rppt@linux.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation')
-rw-r--r-- | Documentation/core-api/memory-hotplug.rst | 38 |
1 files changed, 38 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/core-api/memory-hotplug.rst b/Documentation/core-api/memory-hotplug.rst index a99f2f264725..de7467e48067 100644 --- a/Documentation/core-api/memory-hotplug.rst +++ b/Documentation/core-api/memory-hotplug.rst @@ -85,3 +85,41 @@ MEM_ONLINE, or MEM_OFFLINE action to cancel hotplugging. It stops further processing of the notification queue. NOTIFY_STOP stops further processing of the notification queue. + +Locking Internals +================= + +When adding/removing memory that uses memory block devices (i.e. ordinary RAM), +the device_hotplug_lock should be held to: + +- synchronize against online/offline requests (e.g. via sysfs). This way, memory + block devices can only be accessed (.online/.state attributes) by user + space once memory has been fully added. And when removing memory, we + know nobody is in critical sections. +- synchronize against CPU hotplug and similar (e.g. relevant for ACPI and PPC) + +Especially, there is a possible lock inversion that is avoided using +device_hotplug_lock when adding memory and user space tries to online that +memory faster than expected: + +- device_online() will first take the device_lock(), followed by + mem_hotplug_lock +- add_memory_resource() will first take the mem_hotplug_lock, followed by + the device_lock() (while creating the devices, during bus_add_device()). + +As the device is visible to user space before taking the device_lock(), this +can result in a lock inversion. + +onlining/offlining of memory should be done via device_online()/ +device_offline() - to make sure it is properly synchronized to actions +via sysfs. Holding device_hotplug_lock is advised (to e.g. protect online_type) + +When adding/removing/onlining/offlining memory or adding/removing +heterogeneous/device memory, we should always hold the mem_hotplug_lock in +write mode to serialise memory hotplug (e.g. access to global/zone +variables). + +In addition, mem_hotplug_lock (in contrast to device_hotplug_lock) in read +mode allows for a quite efficient get_online_mems/put_online_mems +implementation, so code accessing memory can protect from that memory +vanishing. |