ext4: remove i_mutex lock in ext4_evict_inode to fix lockdep complaining

The i_mutex lock and flush_completed_IO() added by commit 2581fdc810
in ext4_evict_inode() causes lockdep complaining about potential
deadlock in several places.  In most/all of these LOCKDEP complaints
it looks like it's a false positive, since many of the potential
circular locking cases can't take place by the time the
ext4_evict_inode() is called; but since at the very least it may mask
real problems, we need to address this.

This change removes the flush_completed_IO() and i_mutex lock in
ext4_evict_inode().  Instead, we take a different approach to resolve
the software lockup that commit 2581fdc810 intends to fix.  Rather
than having ext4-dio-unwritten thread wait for grabing the i_mutex
lock of an inode, we use mutex_trylock() instead, and simply requeue
the work item if we fail to grab the inode's i_mutex lock.

This should speed up work queue processing in general and also
prevents the following deadlock scenario: During page fault,
shrink_icache_memory is called that in turn evicts another inode B.
Inode B has some pending io_end work so it calls ext4_ioend_wait()
that waits for inode B's i_ioend_count to become zero.  However, inode
B's ioend work was queued behind some of inode A's ioend work on the
same cpu's ext4-dio-unwritten workqueue.  As the ext4-dio-unwritten
thread on that cpu is processing inode A's ioend work, it tries to
grab inode A's i_mutex lock.  Since the i_mutex lock of inode A is
still hold before the page fault happened, we enter a deadlock.

Signed-off-by: Jiaying Zhang <jiayingz@google.com>
Signed-off-by: "Theodore Ts'o" <tytso@mit.edu>

3 files changed, 18 insertions, 4 deletions

diff --git a/fs/ext4/ext4.h b/fs/ext4/ext4.h
index e717dfd2f2b..b7d7bd0f066 100644
--- a/fs/ext4/ext4.h
+++ b/fs/ext4/ext4.h
@@ -175,6 +175,7 @@ struct mpage_da_data {
  */
 #define	EXT4_IO_END_UNWRITTEN	0x0001
 #define EXT4_IO_END_ERROR	0x0002
+#define EXT4_IO_END_QUEUED	0x0004
 
 struct ext4_io_page {
 	struct page	*p_page;
diff --git a/fs/ext4/inode.c b/fs/ext4/inode.c
index c4da98a959a..18d2558b762 100644
--- a/fs/ext4/inode.c
+++ b/fs/ext4/inode.c
@@ -121,9 +121,6 @@ void ext4_evict_inode(struct inode *inode)
 
 	trace_ext4_evict_inode(inode);
 
-	mutex_lock(&inode->i_mutex);
-	ext4_flush_completed_IO(inode);
-	mutex_unlock(&inode->i_mutex);
 	ext4_ioend_wait(inode);
 
 	if (inode->i_nlink) {
diff --git a/fs/ext4/page-io.c b/fs/ext4/page-io.c
index 78839af7ce2..92f38ee13f8 100644
--- a/fs/ext4/page-io.c
+++ b/fs/ext4/page-io.c
@@ -142,7 +142,23 @@ static void ext4_end_io_work(struct work_struct *work)
 	unsigned long		flags;
 	int			ret;
 
-	mutex_lock(&inode->i_mutex);
+	if (!mutex_trylock(&inode->i_mutex)) {
+		/*
+		 * Requeue the work instead of waiting so that the work
+		 * items queued after this can be processed.
+		 */
+		queue_work(EXT4_SB(inode->i_sb)->dio_unwritten_wq, &io->work);
+		/*
+		 * To prevent the ext4-dio-unwritten thread from keeping
+		 * requeueing end_io requests and occupying cpu for too long,
+		 * yield the cpu if it sees an end_io request that has already
+		 * been requeued.
+		 */
+		if (io->flag & EXT4_IO_END_QUEUED)
+			yield();
+		io->flag |= EXT4_IO_END_QUEUED;
+		return;
+	}
 	ret = ext4_end_io_nolock(io);
 	if (ret < 0) {
 		mutex_unlock(&inode->i_mutex);