Re: [PATCH v2] mm/page_isolation: fix a deadlock with printk()

[Michal Hocko <mhocko@kernel.org>]

On Mon 07-10-19 10:59:10, Qian Cai wrote:
[...]
> It is almost impossible to eliminate all the indirect call chains from
> console_sem/console_owner_lock to zone->lock because it is too normal that
> something later needs to allocate some memory dynamically, so as long as it
> directly call printk() with zone->lock held, it will be in trouble.

Do you have any example where the console driver really _has_ to
allocate. Because I have hard time to believe this is going to work at
all as the atomic context doesn't allow to do any memory reclaim and
such an allocation would be too easy to fail so the allocation cannot
really rely on it.

So again, crippling the MM code just because of lockdep false possitives
or a broken console driver sounds like a wrong way to approach the
problem.

> [  297.425964] -> #1 (&port_lock_key){-.-.}:
> [  297.425967]        __lock_acquire+0x5b3/0xb40
> [  297.425967]        lock_acquire+0x126/0x280
> [  297.425968]        _raw_spin_lock_irqsave+0x3a/0x50
> [  297.425969]        serial8250_console_write+0x3e4/0x450
> [  297.425970]        univ8250_console_write+0x4b/0x60
> [  297.425970]        console_unlock+0x501/0x750
> [  297.425971]        vprintk_emit+0x10d/0x340
> [  297.425972]        vprintk_default+0x1f/0x30
> [  297.425972]        vprintk_func+0x44/0xd4
> [  297.425973]        printk+0x9f/0xc5
> [  297.425974]        register_console+0x39c/0x520
> [  297.425975]        univ8250_console_init+0x23/0x2d
> [  297.425975]        console_init+0x338/0x4cd
> [  297.425976]        start_kernel+0x534/0x724
> [  297.425977]        x86_64_start_reservations+0x24/0x26
> [  297.425977]        x86_64_start_kernel+0xf4/0xfb
> [  297.425978]        secondary_startup_64+0xb6/0xc0

This is an early init code again so the lockdep sounds like a false
possitive to me.
-- 
Michal Hocko
SUSE Labs