powerpc expects IRQs to already be (soft) disabled when switch_mm() is
called, as made clear in the commit message of 9c1e105238 ("powerpc: Allow
perf_counters to access user memory at interrupt time").
Aside from any race conditions that might exist between switch_mm() and an IRQ,
there is also an unconditional hard_irq_disable() in switch_slb(). If that isn't
followed at some point by an IRQ enable then interrupts will remain disabled
until we return to userspace.
It is true that when switch_mm() is called from the scheduler IRQs are off, but
not when it's called by use_mm(). Looking closer we see that last year in commit
f98db6013c ("sched/core: Add switch_mm_irqs_off() and use it in the scheduler")
this was made more explicit by the addition of switch_mm_irqs_off() which is now
called by the scheduler, vs switch_mm() which is used by use_mm().
Arguably it is a bug in use_mm() to call switch_mm() in a different context than
it expects, but fixing that will take time.
This was discovered recently when vhost started throwing warnings such as:
BUG: sleeping function called from invalid context at kernel/mutex.c:578
in_atomic(): 0, irqs_disabled(): 1, pid: 10768, name: vhost-10760
no locks held by vhost-10760/10768.
irq event stamp: 10
hardirqs last enabled at (9): _raw_spin_unlock_irq+0x40/0x80
hardirqs last disabled at (10): switch_slb+0x2e4/0x490
softirqs last enabled at (0): copy_process+0x5e8/0x1260
softirqs last disabled at (0): (null)
Call Trace:
show_stack+0x88/0x390 (unreliable)
dump_stack+0x30/0x44
__might_sleep+0x1c4/0x2d0
mutex_lock_nested+0x74/0x5c0
cgroup_attach_task_all+0x5c/0x180
vhost_attach_cgroups_work+0x58/0x80 [vhost]
vhost_worker+0x24c/0x3d0 [vhost]
kthread+0xec/0x100
ret_from_kernel_thread+0x5c/0xd4
Prior to commit 04b96e5528 ("vhost: lockless enqueuing") (Aug 2016) the
vhost_worker() would do a spin_unlock_irq() not long after calling use_mm(),
which had the effect of reenabling IRQs. Since that commit removed the locking
in vhost_worker() the body of the vhost_worker() loop now runs with interrupts
off causing the warnings.
This patch addresses the problem by making the powerpc code mirror the x86 code,
ie. we disable interrupts in switch_mm(), and optimise the scheduler case by
defining switch_mm_irqs_off().
Cc: stable@vger.kernel.org # v4.7+
Signed-off-by: David Gibson <david@gibson.dropbear.id.au>
[mpe: Flesh out/rewrite change log, add stable]
Signed-off-by: Michael Ellerman <mpe@ellerman.id.au>