On Wed, 16 May 2012, Mike Snitzer wrote:

> Reinstate dm_flush_all and dm_table_flush_all. dm_blk_close will
> now trigger the .flush method of all targets within a table on the last
> close of a DM device.
>
> In the case of the thin target, the thin_flush method will commit the
> backing pool's metadata.
>
> Doing so avoids a deadlock that has been observed with the following
> sequence (as can be triggered via "dmsetup remove_all"):
> - IO is issued to a thin device, thin device is closed
> - pool's metadata device is suspended before the pool is
> - because the pool still has outstanding IO we deadlock because the
> pool's metadata device is suspended
>
> Signed-off-by: Mike Snitzer <snitzer@redhat.com>
> Cc: stable@vger.kernel.org

I'd say --- don't do this sequence.

Device mapper generally expects that devices are suspended top-down ---
i.e. you should first suspend the thin device and then suspend its
underlying data and metadata device. If you violate this sequence and
suspend bottom-up, you get deadlocks.

For example, if dm-mirror is resynchronizing and you suspend the
underlying leg or log volume and then suspend dm-mirror, you get a
deadlock.

If dm-snapshot is merging and you suspend the underlying snapshot or
origin volume and then suspend snapshot-merget target, you get a deadlock.

These are not bugs in dm-mirror or dm-snapshot, this is expected behavior.
Userspace shouldn't do any bottom-up suspend sequence.

In the same sense, if you suspend the underlying data or metadata pool and
then suspend dm-thin, you get a deadlock too. Fix userspace so that it
doesn't do it.

Mikulas

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