JFFS2 deadlock with alloc_sem

[David Woodhouse]

On Mon, 2007-07-30 at 11:45 -0500, Dave Kleikamp wrote:
> Thus we conclude that the root cause of the problem is that jffs2 is not 
> conforming to the strict order of acquiring multiple locks, ie., all code 
> paths resulting in acquiring multiple locks must do so in the same order. 
> In this case, gc thread requests first the file lock, then the page lock, 
> however jffs2_readpage function requests the page lock first, then the file 
> lock. Another potential deadlock source is in jffs2_prepare_write, in which it 
> requests page lock, then the file lock. 

If that's the explanation, then the patch which Nathan tried (dropping
f->sem before jffs2_gc_fetch_page(), followed by your cleanups¹) ought
to have fixed the problem. And I'd be happier with that version rather
than introducing a new read_cache_page_async_trylock() solely for JFFS2.

It's actually OK to drop f->sem in jffs2_garbage_collect_dnode(). We
hold the alloc_sem anyway -- nobody's going to be _changing_ the file
under us. In fact, the garbage collector probably doesn't need to grab
f->sem until it's actually going to _change_ something.

-- 
dwmw2

¹ http://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/linux-mtd/2007-June/018588.html