Commit 89b15332 authored by Johannes Weiner's avatar Johannes Weiner Committed by Linus Torvalds
Browse files

mm: drop mmap_sem before calling balance_dirty_pages() in write fault

One of our services is observing hanging ps/top/etc under heavy write
IO, and the task states show this is an mmap_sem priority inversion:

A write fault is holding the mmap_sem in read-mode and waiting for
(heavily cgroup-limited) IO in balance_dirty_pages():

    balance_dirty_pages+0x724/0x905
    balance_dirty_pages_ratelimited+0x254/0x390
    fault_dirty_shared_page.isra.96+0x4a/0x90
    do_wp_page+0x33e/0x400
    __handle_mm_fault+0x6f0/0xfa0
    handle_mm_fault+0xe4/0x200
    __do_page_fault+0x22b/0x4a0
    page_fault+0x45/0x50

Somebody tries to change the address space, contending for the mmap_sem in
write-mode:

    call_rwsem_down_write_failed_killable+0x13/0x20
    do_mprotect_pkey+0xa8/0x330
    SyS_mprotect+0xf/0x20
    do_syscall_64+0x5b/0x100
    entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x3d/0xa2

The waiting writer locks out all subsequent readers to avoid lock
starvation, and several threads can be seen hanging like this:

    c...
parent 1603c8d1
Supports Markdown
0% or .
You are about to add 0 people to the discussion. Proceed with caution.
Finish editing this message first!
Please register or to comment