On Fri, 13 Dec 2013, James Bottomley wrote:

> > > I wasn't clear on the reason for that problem.  Does it also arise from 
> > > late device_del for scsi_target?  I could try to change the way that 
> > > works, if anybody (Hans?) would like to test it.
> > 
> > While the recent sysfs changes made this issue more visible, Greg
> > wants to make sure that devices are removed from leaf up in all cases
> > and keep the warning to ensure that.  Would there be a way fix SCSI
> > removal ordering?
> 
> Could someone analyse the actual problem?  We're quite careful even on
> host remove to iterate and remove all the devices, then targets, then
> host (and allied transport objects).  Which removal is inverted?

The scsi_host is removed before the scsi_target.

The reason is that scsi_remove_host() calls
device_del(&shost->shost_gendev) directly, but
scsi_target_reap_usercontext() doesn't call device_del(&starget->dev)
until it gets invoked (indirectly) from
scsi_device_dev_release_usercontext(), by way of scsi_target_reap().

Thus, the host gets removed from visibility at the appropriate time,
but the target remains until all the scsi_devices beneath it are not
only removed from visibility but also released (their refcounts drop to
0).

This can occur much later if, for example, a scsi_device holds a
mounted filesystem.  The scsi_host and scsi_device are removed when the
underlying USB device is unplugged.  But the scsi_device isn't
released, and hence the scsi_target isn't removed, until the filesystem
is unmounted.

Broadly speaking, the correct approach would be to call
scsi_target_reap() from __scsi_remove_device() instead of from
scsi_device_dev_release_usercontext().

Alan Stern

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