When we walk the lock chain, we drop all locks after each step. So the
lock chain can change under us before we reacquire the locks. That's
harmless in principle as we just follow the wrong lock path. But it
can lead to a false positive in the dead lock detection logic:
T0 holds L0
T0 blocks on L1 held by T1
T1 blocks on L2 held by T2
T2 blocks on L3 held by T3
T4 blocks on L4 held by T4
Now we walk the chain
lock T1 -> lock L2 -> adjust L2 -> unlock T1 ->
lock T2 -> adjust T2 -> drop locks
T2 times out and blocks on L0
Now we continue:
lock T2 -> lock L0 -> deadlock detected, but it's not a deadlock at all.
Brad tried to work around that in the deadlock detection logic itself,
but the more I looked at it the less I liked it, because it's crystal
ball magic after the fact.
We actually can detect a chain change very simple:
lock T1 -> lock L2 -> adjust L2 -> unlock T1 -> lock T2 -> adjust T2 ->
next_lock = T2->pi_blocked_on->lock;
drop locks
T2 times out and blocks on L0
Now we continue:
lock T2 ->
if (next_lock != T2->pi_blocked_on->lock)
return;
So if we detect that T2 is now blocked on a different lock we stop the
chain walk. That's also correct in the following scenario:
lock T1 -> lock L2 -> adjust L2 -> unlock T1 -> lock T2 -> adjust T2 ->
next_lock = T2->pi_blocked_on->lock;
drop locks
T3 times out and drops L3
T2 acquires L3 and blocks on L4 now
Now we continue:
lock T2 ->
if (next_lock != T2->pi_blocked_on->lock)
return;
We don't have to follow up the chain at that point, because T2
propagated our priority up to T4 already.
[ Folded a cleanup patch from peterz ]
Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Reported-by: Brad Mouring <bmouring@ni.com>
Cc: Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org>
Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20140605152801.930031935@linutronix.de
Cc: stable@vger.kernel.org
8208498438