md: avoid deadlock when dirty buffers during md_stop.

When the last process closes /dev/mdX sync_blockdev will be called so
that all buffers get flushed.
So if it is then opened for the STOP_ARRAY ioctl to be sent there will
be nothing to flush.

However if we open /dev/mdX in order to send the STOP_ARRAY ioctl just
moments before some other process which was writing closes their file
descriptor, then there won't be a 'last close' and the buffers might
not get flushed.

So do_md_stop() calls sync_blockdev().  However at this point it is
holding ->reconfig_mutex.  So if the array is currently 'clean' then
the writes from sync_blockdev() will not complete until the array
can be marked dirty and that won't happen until some other thread
can get ->reconfig_mutex.  So we deadlock.

We need to move the sync_blockdev() call to before we take
->reconfig_mutex.
However then some other thread could open /dev/mdX and write to it
after we call sync_blockdev() and before we actually stop the array.
This can leave dirty data in the page cache which is awkward.

So introduce new flag MD_STILL_CLOSED.  Set it before calling
sync_blockdev(), clear it if anyone does open the file, and abort the
STOP_ARRAY attempt if it gets set before we lock against further
opens.

It is still possible to get problems if you open /dev/mdX, write to
it, then issue the STOP_ARRAY ioctl.  Just don't do that.

Signed-off-by: NeilBrown <neilb@suse.de>

0 files changed, 0 insertions, 0 deletions