[RFC 0/3] aio-posix: call ->poll_end() when removing AioHandler

[Stefan Hajnoczi]

Hanna and Fiona encountered a bug in aio_set_fd_handler(): there is no matching
io_poll_end() call upon removing an AioHandler when io_poll_begin() was
previously called. The missing io_poll_end() call leaves virtqueue
notifications disabled and the virtqueue's ioeventfd will never become
readable anymore.

The details of how virtio-scsi devices using IOThreads can hang after
hotplug/unplug are covered here:
https://issues.redhat.com/browse/RHEL-3934

Hanna is currently away over the December holidays. I'm sending these RFC
patches in the meantime. They demonstrate running aio_set_fd_handler() in the
AioContext home thread and adding the missing io_poll_end() call.

The downside to my approach is that aio_set_fd_handler() becomes a
synchronization point that waits for the remote AioContext thread to finish
running a BH. Synchronization points are prone to deadlocks if the caller
invokes them while holding a lock that the remote AioContext needs to make
progress or if the remote AioContext cannot make progress before we make
progress in our own event loop. To minimize these concerns I have based this
patch series on my AioContext lock removal series and only allow the main loop
thread to call aio_set_fd_handler() on other threads (which I think is already
the convention today).

Another concern is that aio_set_fd_handler() now invokes user-provided
io_poll_end(), io_poll(), and io_poll_ready() functions. The io_poll_ready()
callback might contain a nested aio_poll() call, so there is a new place where
nested event loops can occur and hence a new re-entrant code path that I
haven't thought about yet.

But there you have it. Please let me know what you think and try your
reproducers to see if this fixes the missing io_poll_end() issue. Thanks!

Alternatives welcome! (A cleaner version of this approach might be to forbid
cross-thread aio_set_fd_handler() calls and to refactor all
aio_set_fd_handler() callers so they come from the AioContext's home thread.
I'm starting to think that only the aio_notify() and aio_schedule_bh() APIs
should be thread-safe.)

Stefan Hajnoczi (3):
  aio-posix: run aio_set_fd_handler() in target AioContext
  aio: use counter instead of ctx->list_lock
  aio-posix: call ->poll_end() when removing AioHandler

 include/block/aio.h |  22 ++---
 util/aio-posix.c    | 197 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++------------
 util/async.c        |   2 -
 util/fdmon-epoll.c  |   6 +-
 4 files changed, 152 insertions(+), 75 deletions(-)

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2.43.0