RFC: mutex: hung tasks on SMP platforms with asm-generic/mutex-xchg.h

[Nicolas Pitre]

On Mon, 13 Aug 2012, Peter Zijlstra wrote:

> OK, I like this.. Thanks guys! Will will you send a final and complete
> patch?

Here it is:

--- >8

Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2012 15:22:09 +0100
From: Will Deacon <will.deacon at arm.com>
Subject: [PATCH] mutex: place lock in contended state after fastpath_lock failure

ARM recently moved to asm-generic/mutex-xchg.h for its mutex
implementation after the previous implementation was found to be missing
some crucial memory barriers. However, this has revealed some problems
running hackbench on SMP platforms due to the way in which the
MUTEX_SPIN_ON_OWNER code operates.

The symptoms are that a bunch of hackbench tasks are left waiting on an
unlocked mutex and therefore never get woken up to claim it. This boils
down to the following sequence of events:

        Task A        Task B        Task C        Lock value
0                                                     1
1       lock()                                        0
2                     lock()                          0
3                     spin(A)                         0
4       unlock()                                      1
5                                   lock()            0
6                     cmpxchg(1,0)                    0
7                     contended()                    -1
8       lock()                                        0
9       spin(C)                                       0
10                                  unlock()          1
11      cmpxchg(1,0)                                  0
12      unlock()                                      1

At this point, the lock is unlocked, but Task B is in an uninterruptible
sleep with nobody to wake it up.

This patch fixes the problem by ensuring we put the lock into the
contended state if we fail to acquire it on the fastpath, ensuring that
any blocked waiters are woken up when the mutex is released.

Cc: Arnd Bergmann <arnd at arndb.de>
Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx at linutronix.de>
Cc: Chris Mason <chris.mason at fusionio.com>
Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo at elte.hu>
Cc: <stable at vger.kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Will Deacon <will.deacon at arm.com>
Reviewed-by: Nicolas Pitre <nico at linaro.org>
---

 include/asm-generic/mutex-xchg.h |   11 +++++++++--
 1 files changed, 9 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

diff --git a/include/asm-generic/mutex-xchg.h b/include/asm-generic/mutex-xchg.h
index 580a6d3..c04e0db 100644
--- a/include/asm-generic/mutex-xchg.h
+++ b/include/asm-generic/mutex-xchg.h
@@ -26,7 +26,13 @@ static inline void
 __mutex_fastpath_lock(atomic_t *count, void (*fail_fn)(atomic_t *))
 {
 	if (unlikely(atomic_xchg(count, 0) != 1))
-		fail_fn(count);
+		/*
+		 * We failed to acquire the lock, so mark it contended
+		 * to ensure that any waiting tasks are woken up by the
+		 * unlock slow path.
+		 */
+		if (likely(atomic_xchg(count, -1) != 1))
+			fail_fn(count);
 }
 
 /**
@@ -43,7 +49,8 @@ static inline int
 __mutex_fastpath_lock_retval(atomic_t *count, int (*fail_fn)(atomic_t *))
 {
 	if (unlikely(atomic_xchg(count, 0) != 1))
-		return fail_fn(count);
+		if (likely(atomic_xchg(count, -1) != 1))
+			return fail_fn(count);
 	return 0;
 }