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authorDavid Hildenbrand <david@redhat.com>2018-10-11 07:58:17 +0300
committerJonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>2018-10-12 11:14:19 -0600
commit3a7452c5a72bd8098f6d4b37341e25a8725d790b (patch)
tree63083f500b1cc0f7967a3f19425bb248bdcc53de /Documentation/core-api
parent52d7e21fd5677829353f7490723adf5f61999d84 (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/core-api')
-rw-r--r--Documentation/core-api/memory-hotplug.rst38
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.