Linux Ethernet Bridging - Oct 2022 - [Bridge] [RFC][PATCH v2 19/31] timers: net: Use del_timer_shutdown() before freeing timer

On Thu, Oct 27, 2022 at 12:55 PM Steven Rostedt <rostedt at goodmis.org>
wrote:
>
> I think we need to update this code to squeeze in a del_timer_shutdown() to
> make sure that the timers are never restarted.
So the reason the networking code does this is that it can't just do
the old 'sync()' thing, the timers are deleted in contexts where that
isn't valid.

Which is also afaik why the networking code does that whole "timer
implies a refcount to the socket" and then does the

    if (del_timer(timer))
           sock_put()

thing (ie if the del_timer failed - possibly because it was already
running - you leave the refcount alone).

So the networking code cannot do the del_timer_shutdown() for the same
reason it cannot do the del_timer_sync(): it can't afford to wait for
the timer to stop running.

I suspect it needs something like a new "del_timer_shutdown_async()"
that isn't synchronous, but does that

 - acts as del_timer in that it doesn't wait, and returns a success if
it could just remove the pending case

 - does that "mark timer for shutdown" in that success case

or something similar.

But the networking people will know better.

               Linus

On Thu, 27 Oct 2022 13:15:23 -0700
Linus Torvalds <torvalds at linux-foundation.org> wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 27, 2022 at 12:55 PM Steven Rostedt <rostedt at
goodmis.org> wrote:
> >
> > I think we need to update this code to squeeze in a
del_timer_shutdown() to
> > make sure that the timers are never restarted.  
> 
> So the reason the networking code does this is that it can't just do
> the old 'sync()' thing, the timers are deleted in contexts where
that
> isn't valid.
> 
> Which is also afaik why the networking code does that whole "timer
> implies a refcount to the socket" and then does the
> 
>     if (del_timer(timer))
>            sock_put()
> 
> thing (ie if the del_timer failed - possibly because it was already
> running - you leave the refcount alone).
OK, so the above is assuming that the timer is always active, and
del_timer() returns if it successfully removed it (where it can call
sock_put()), but if del_timer() returns 0, that means the timer is
currently running (or about to be), so it doesn't call sock_put().
> 
> So the networking code cannot do the del_timer_shutdown() for the same
> reason it cannot do the del_timer_sync(): it can't afford to wait for
> the timer to stop running.
> 
> I suspect it needs something like a new
"del_timer_shutdown_async()"
> that isn't synchronous, but does that
> 
>  - acts as del_timer in that it doesn't wait, and returns a success if
> it could just remove the pending case
> 
>  - does that "mark timer for shutdown" in that success case
> 
> or something similar.
>
What about del_timer_try_shutdown(), that if it removes the timer, it sets
the function to NULL (making it equivalent to a successful shutdown),
otherwise it does nothing. Allowing the the timer to be rearmed.

I think this would work in this case.

-- Steve