Debugging a TTY race condition on M1 (memory ordering dragons)

[Boqun Feng]

On Tue, Aug 16, 2022 at 01:01:17AM +0900, Hector Martin wrote:
> (Resend, because I still can't use mail clients properly it seems...)
> 
> On 15/08/2022 22.47, Will Deacon wrote:
> > As I mentioned in the thread you linked to, the architecture was undergoing
> > review in this area. I should've followed back up, but in the end it was
> > tightened retrospectively to provide the behaviour you wanted. This was
> > achieved by augmenting the barrier-ordered-before relation with:
> > 
> >   * RW1 is a memory write effect W1 and is generated by an atomic instruction
> >     with both Acquire and Release semantics.
> > 
> > You can see this in the latest Arm ARM.
> > 
> > However, test_and_set_bit() is unordered on failure (i.e. when the bit is
> > unchanged) and uses READ_ONCE() as a quick check before the RmW. See the
> > "ORDERING" section of Documentation/atomic_bitops.txt.
> 
> Argh, I'd completely missed that early exit (and had stumbled on an
> unofficial doc that said it was always ordered, which confused me).
> Indeed, getting rid of the early exit it fixes the problem.
> 
> > I think you're missing the "shortcut" in test_and_set_bit():
> > 
> >         if (READ_ONCE(*p) & mask)
> >                 return 1;
> > 
> >         old = arch_atomic_long_fetch_or(mask, (atomic_long_t *)p);
> > 
> > so if the bit is already set (which I think is the 'ret == false' case)
> > then you've only got a control dependency here and we elide writing to
> > B.
> 
> Completely missed it. Ouch.
> 
> > 
> >>
> >> CPU#2:
> >>   DMB ISHST
> >>   STR B
> > 
> > Missing DMB ISH here from the smp_mb()?
> 
> Yup, my apologies, that was a brain fart while writing the email. I did
> have it in the litmus tests (and they indeed completely fail without it).
> 
> > If that non-atomic store is hitting the same variable, then it cannot land
> > in the middle of the atomic RmW. The architecture says:
> > 
> >  | The atomic instructions perform atomic read and write operations on a memory
> >  | location such that the architecture guarantees that no modification of that
> >  | memory location by another observer can occur between the read and the write
> >  | defined by that instruction.
> > 
> > and the .cat file used by herd has a separate constraint for this (see the
> > "empty rmw & (fre; coe) as atomic" line).
> 
> Ha, I was using G.a from Jan 2021 (back when I started working on this
> M1 stuff), and it looks like that wording was added as an issue after
> that (D17572) :-)
> 
> > There's never anything obvious when you're working with this sort of stuff,
> > but my suggestion is that we work towards a litmus tests that we both agree
> > represents the code and then take it from there. At the moment there's an
> > awful lof of information, but you can see from my comments that I'm not
> > up to speed with you yet!
> 
> I think you nailed it with the early exit, I'd completely missed that. I
> think I can fairly confidently say that's the issue now. As for the
> litmus test, indeed with the revised definitions of the memory model /
> ARM my concerns no longer apply, hence why I couldn't reproduce them
> (and the hardware, thankfully, seems to agree here).
> 
> Workqueues are broken. Yay! I'll send a patch.
> 

Hmm.. but doesn't your (and Will's) finding actually show why
queue_work() only guarantee ordering if queuing succeeds? In other
words, if you want extra ordering, use smp_mb() before queue_work()
like:

	smp_mb();	// pairs with smp_mb() in set_work_pool_and_clear_pending()
	queue_work();	// if queue_work() return false, it means the work
			// is pending, and someone will eventually clear
		      	// the pending bit, with the smp_mb() above it's
			// guaranteed that work function will see the
			// memory accesses above.

Of course, I shall defer this to workqueue folks. Just saying that it
may not be broken. We have a few similar guarantees, for example,
wake_up_process() only provides ordering if it really wakes up a
process.

Regards,
Boqun

> - Hector