datapath: Fix race against workqueue in dp_dev and simplify code.
The dp_dev_destroy() function failed to cancel the xmit_queue work, which
allowed it to run after the device had been destroyed, accessing freed
memory. However, simply canceling the work with cancel_work_sync() would
be insufficient, since other packets could get queued while the work
function was running. Stopping the queue with netif_tx_disable() doesn't
help, because the final action in dp_dev_do_xmit() is to re-enable the TX
queue.
This issue led me to re-examine why the dp_dev needs to use a work_struct
at all. This was implemented in commit
71f13ed0b "Send of0 packets from
workqueue, to avoid recursive locking of ofN device" due to a complaint
from lockdep about recursive locking.
However, there's no actual reason that we need any locking around
dp_dev_xmit(). Until now, it has accepted the standard locking provided
by the network stack. But looking at the other software devices (veth,
loopback), those use NETIF_F_LLTX, which disables this locking, and
presumably do so for this very reason. In fact, the lwn article at
http://lwn.net/Articles/121566/ hints that NETIF_F_LLTX, which is otherwise
discouraged in the kernel, is acceptable for "certain types of software
device."
So this commit switches to using NETIF_F_LLTX for dp_dev and gets rid
of the work_struct.
In the process, I noticed that veth and loopback also take advantage of
a network device destruction "hook" using the net_device "destructor"
member. Using this we can automatically get called on network device
destruction at the point where rtnl_unlock() is called. This allows us
to stop stringing the dp_devs that are being destroyed onto a list so
that we can free them, and thus simplifies the code along all the paths
that call dp_dev_destroy().
This commit gets rid of a call to synchronize_rcu() (disguised as a call
to synchronize_net(), which is a macro that expands to synchronize_rcu()),
so it probably speeds up deleting ports, too.
projects / openvswitch / commit