Depending on the workloads, the following circular locking dependency warning between sb_internal (a percpu rwsem) and fs_reclaim (a pseudo lock) may show up:
====================================================== WARNING: possible circular locking dependency detected 5.0.0-rc1+ #60 Tainted: G W ------------------------------------------------------ fsfreeze/4346 is trying to acquire lock: 0000000026f1d784 (fs_reclaim){+.+.}, at: fs_reclaim_acquire.part.19+0x5/0x30 but task is already holding lock: 0000000072bfc54b (sb_internal){++++}, at: percpu_down_write+0xb4/0x650 which lock already depends on the new lock. : Possible unsafe locking scenario: CPU0 CPU1 ---- ---- lock(sb_internal); lock(fs_reclaim); lock(sb_internal); lock(fs_reclaim); *** DEADLOCK *** 4 locks held by fsfreeze/4346: #0: 00000000b478ef56 (sb_writers#8){++++}, at: percpu_down_write+0xb4/0x650 #1: 000000001ec487a9 (&type->s_umount_key#28){++++}, at: freeze_super+0xda/0x290 #2: 000000003edbd5a0 (sb_pagefaults){++++}, at: percpu_down_write+0xb4/0x650 #3: 0000000072bfc54b (sb_internal){++++}, at: percpu_down_write+0xb4/0x650 stack backtrace: Call Trace: dump_stack+0xe0/0x19a print_circular_bug.isra.10.cold.34+0x2f4/0x435 check_prev_add.constprop.19+0xca1/0x15f0 validate_chain.isra.14+0x11af/0x3b50 __lock_acquire+0x728/0x1200 lock_acquire+0x269/0x5a0 fs_reclaim_acquire.part.19+0x29/0x30 fs_reclaim_acquire+0x19/0x20 kmem_cache_alloc+0x3e/0x3f0 kmem_zone_alloc+0x79/0x150 xfs_trans_alloc+0xfa/0x9d0 xfs_sync_sb+0x86/0x170 xfs_log_sbcount+0x10f/0x140 xfs_quiesce_attr+0x134/0x270 xfs_fs_freeze+0x4a/0x70 freeze_super+0x1af/0x290 do_vfs_ioctl+0xedc/0x16c0 ksys_ioctl+0x41/0x80 __x64_sys_ioctl+0x73/0xa9 do_syscall_64+0x18f/0xd23 entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x49/0xbe This is a false positive as all the dirty pages are flushed out before the filesystem can be frozen. One way to avoid this splat is to add GFP_NOFS to the affected allocation calls. This is what PF_MEMALLOC_NOFS per-process flag is for. This does reduce the potential source of memory where reclaim can be done. This shouldn't matter unless the system is really running out of memory. In that particular case, the filesystem freeze operation may fail while it was succeeding previously. Without this patch, the command sequence below will show that the lock dependency chain sb_internal -> fs_reclaim exists. # fsfreeze -f /home # fsfreeze --unfreeze /home # grep -i fs_reclaim -C 3 /proc/lockdep_chains | grep -C 5 sb_internal After applying the patch, such sb_internal -> fs_reclaim lock dependency chain can no longer be found. Because of that, the locking dependency warning will not be shown. Suggested-by: Dave Chinner <da...@fromorbit.com> Signed-off-by: Waiman Long <long...@redhat.com> --- fs/xfs/xfs_super.c | 12 +++++++++++- 1 file changed, 11 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-) diff --git a/fs/xfs/xfs_super.c b/fs/xfs/xfs_super.c index 379cbff438bc..dcc97bad950a 100644 --- a/fs/xfs/xfs_super.c +++ b/fs/xfs/xfs_super.c @@ -913,11 +913,21 @@ xfs_fs_freeze( struct super_block *sb) { struct xfs_mount *mp = XFS_M(sb); + unsigned long pflags; + int ret; + /* + * Disable fs reclaim in memory allocation for fs freeze to avoid + * causing a possible circular locking dependency lockdep splat + * relating to fs reclaim. + */ + current_set_flags_nested(&pflags, PF_MEMALLOC_NOFS); xfs_stop_block_reaping(mp); xfs_save_resvblks(mp); xfs_quiesce_attr(mp); - return xfs_sync_sb(mp, true); + ret = xfs_sync_sb(mp, true); + current_restore_flags_nested(&pflags, PF_MEMALLOC_NOFS); + return ret; } STATIC int -- 2.18.1