On 09/11/2012 03:24 PM, Avi Kivity wrote: > On 09/11/2012 12:57 PM, Jan Kiszka wrote: >> On 2012-09-11 11:44, liu ping fan wrote: >>> On Tue, Sep 11, 2012 at 4:35 PM, Avi Kivity <a...@redhat.com> wrote: >>>> On 09/11/2012 10:51 AM, Liu Ping Fan wrote: >>>>> From: Liu Ping Fan <pingf...@linux.vnet.ibm.com> >>>>> >>>>> The func call chain can suffer from recursively hold >>>>> qemu_mutex_lock_iothread. We introduce lockmap to record the >>>>> lock depth. >>>> >>>> What is the root cause? io handlers initiating I/O? >>>> >>> cpu_physical_memory_rw() can be called nested, and when called, it can >>> be protected by no-lock/device lock/ big-lock. >>> I think without big lock, io-dispatcher should face the same issue. >>> As to main-loop, have not carefully consider, but at least, dma-helper >>> will call cpu_physical_memory_rw() with big-lock. >> >> That is our core problem: inconsistent invocation of existing services >> /wrt locking. For portio, I was lucky that there is no nesting and I was >> able to drop the big lock around all (x86) call sites. But MMIO is way >> more tricky due to DMA nesting. > > Maybe we need to switch to a continuation style. Instead of expecting > cpu_physical_memory_rw() to complete synchronously, it becomes an > asynchronous call and you provide it with a completion. That means > devices which use it are forced to drop the lock in between. Block and > network clients will be easy to convert since they already use APIs that > drop the lock (except for accessing the descriptors). > >> We could try to introduce a different version of cpu_physical_memory_rw, >> cpu_physical_memory_rw_unlocked. But the problem remains that an MMIO >> request can trigger the very same access in a nested fashion, and we >> will have to detect this to avoid locking up QEMU (locking up the guest >> might be OK). > > An async version of c_p_m_rw() will just cause a completion to bounce > around, consuming cpu but not deadlocking anything. If we can keep a > count of the bounces, we might be able to stall it indefinitely or at > least ratelimit it. >
Another option is to require all users of c_p_m_rw() and related to use a coroutine or thread. That makes the programming easier (but still required a revalidation after the dropped lock). -- error compiling committee.c: too many arguments to function